Bear-ly recovered? Tribes and conservationists divided on the future of the grizzly

Scattered along the eastern shore of northern Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille sit large, craggy basalt rocks that hide beneath their fuzzy lichen coats ancient etchings of bear claws.

This is a remnant of the Kalispel tribe’s birth, which myth says came from the marriage of the lakes, said Ray Entz, director of wildlife and terrestrial resources for the tribe.

The Yellowstone grizzly bear was designated as threatened with extinction in 1975, just two years after the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. This provided the grizzly population in the area, which had dwindled to barely more than 100 bears, with protections against hunting as well as kick-started efforts to grow the population back to a sustainable level.

On June 22, the federal government decided those efforts had been successful and removed the grizzly bear from the list of threatened species. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke celebrated the return of grizzly management to the states and tribes, noting that the estimated 700 bears in Yellowstone today met the criteria for a healthy population determined by the federal government.

“This achievement stands as one of America’s great conservation successes,” Zinke, who grew up in Montana, said in a statement. “The culmination of decades of hard work and dedication on the part of the state, tribal, federal and private partners.”

The Piikani Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy – a First Nations tribe in Alberta, Canada – strongly disagrees.

“We are adamantly opposed to this decision. Like his predecessors, Zinke has failed to uphold and honor the federal-Indian trust responsibility in the delisting process,” Chief Stan Grier of the Piikani Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy said in a statement.

Calling the delisting “an act of cultural genocide,” Grier slammed the decision as a scheme in favor of trophy hunters and energy companies that he claims had undue influence on the process.

The removal of federal protections opens up areas of grizzly bear habitat to energy exploration and to game hunters, though not within national parkland or on tribal lands, which are the sovereign property of the tribe. States were also required to submit conservation plans for monitoring the ongoing health of the grizzly population.

The grizzly bear is sacred to many Native tribes – including the Spokane, Kootenai, Coeur d’Alene, and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation tribal nations, all of which signed a treaty of solidarity that aims to protect and reintroduce grizzly bears across their historic range.

Tribes divided

But despite the Kalispel’s heritage as the Bear People, or perhaps because of it, when the 125 Native tribes came together to sign the treaty in October, the Kalispels were not among them.

The delisting of the grizzly bear is good news, said Entz, who is a sitting member of the Selkirk/Cabinet-Yaak recovery team for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, which is a coordinating group for federal, state and tribal wildlife agencies.

While Entz said that the Kalispel tribe respected the intentions of the Piikani Nation treaty, he said that certain elements didn’t work for the tribe. The treaty, which calls for the reintroduction of the grizzly across its historic range and rejects the legitimacy of state conservation efforts, also calls for a ban on grizzly hunting.

Many of the nearly 500 members of the Kalispel tribe hunt for food, including the grizzly, and the hunt is a celebrated part of Kalispel culture, Entz said. Now that the grizzly has recovered, this traditional practice could continue, he said.

“The goal of the (Endangered Species Act) is to one day take the species off the list,” Entz said. “When that goal, recovery, is achieved, (the species) should be delisted.”

The number of bears that constitute a recovered population is a matter of controversy, however. While states and the federal government have declared that the estimated 700 bears in Yellowstone – far more than the original goal of 500 bears – represents recovery, other groups have claimed delisting has come too soon.

What matters most when considering if a population has recovered is to evaluate its genetic health, said Chris Servheen, an adjunct professor at the University of Montana and a 35-year grizzly recovery veteran of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Genetic health is measured by the amount of genetic diversity in the population, high levels of which may indicate the species is more likely to survive potential threats.

Other variables, like availability of food and hunting deaths, impact a population as well, but genetic health is the main criterion for sustainability.

“There is no magic number,” Servheen said. “But there have to be enough bears for good genetic health.”

Once genetic health is established, the number of bears needed in the population is a matter of management, Servheen said.

Weighing the options

The last time Dr. Michael Marchand saw a grizzly bear was more than 60 years ago, running off in the distance. Marchand, who serves as chairman of the Colville Business Council, said about half of the tribe’s more than 9,000 members live traditional lives and many maintain great respect for predator animals like the grizzly bear.

There was great support in the tribe for the Piikani Nation treaty, Marchand said, but even in light of the federal delisting the topic hasn’t really come up again.

“Grizzlies are pretty rare around here,” he laughed. “Maybe that’s why we support having more of them.”

Part of the Endangered Species Act plan to revitalize the grizzly bear included evaluating its reintroduction into the North Cascades region in western Washington state, where the bear is thought to have historically lived. The North Cascades proposal has slowly edged forward since the 1990s, and recently culminated in a draft environmental impact survey by the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, said National Park Service spokeswoman Denise Schultz.

The plan offers three alternatives for reintroducing grizzlies to the area, as well as one “no-action” alternative where conservation authorities would allow reintroduction to happen organically.

A final report is expected in January 2018, after the more than 126,000 comments from the latest round of public comments are analyzed, she said. However, a report on the more than 3,000 public comments received during a public scoping session in 2015 showed about half of the comments submitted supported the active restoration of bears to the North Cascades.

“I think it is an excellent idea,” Servheen said. “The North Cascades was an initial area for recovery identified in the listing, it should be pursued.”

Not everyone is so supportive of the idea. Marchand, of the Colville tribe, said he recently received a call from a tribe near Seattle asking the Colville tribe to reconsider its participation in the Piikani Nation treaty. The Seattle tribe worried that the reintroduction of grizzlies to the North Cascades would destroy the tourism the tribe relied upon, Marchand said.

Instead of expanding grizzly recovery efforts to the North Cascades, the focus should remain on the three existing populations, Entz said. Recovery teams already struggle with limited resources and funds that would only be stretched further with a new population, he said.

In the end, the sustained health of the Yellowstone grizzly will depend on the strength of state and tribal commitments to good management, Servheen said.

“There are many documents that guide the complex work of population stability,” he said. “The question is whether there’s the will to do it.”