Grizzly bears under the gun

A female grizzly bear shot in self-defense by a Pennsylvania elk hunter last week will push mortality levels for the bears past a management “trigger point” just a year and a half after the Yellowstone area grizzlies were removed from the Endangered Species list.

So far this year, 44 grizzlies have been killed in the Yellowstone ecosystem, including nine management removals, 19 associated with hunting, six from natural causes, five from other human activities and five where the cause of death could not be determined.

“Likely well over 10 percent of the population is dead,” said Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council. With the latest incident, female bear deaths have exceeded their thresholds, while the male threshold was exceeded a week ago. If the mortality thresholds are exceeded three years in a row for male grizzlies or two years in a row for females, bear managers would pursue an extensive review of the conservation strategy and perhaps return the bears to endangered status.

• Both grizzly bears moved to the Cabinet Mountains this year as part of a population augmentation program have been killed. A Noxon man was cited for shooting one of them behind his house.

The other grizzly, a 3-year-old female, was killed by a train west of Noxon two weeks ago, Montana wildlife officials said.

The carcass was recovered from the Clark Fork River.

The bear had been trapped and moved July 24 from the Stillwater Drainage near Trego to help bolster the grizzly population in the Cabinet Mountains.

The decomposed carcass of another grizzly was recovered Oct. 24 about 18 miles north of Thompson Falls.