Conservation Northwest

Conservation Northwest updates Joe Scott International conservation director, jscott@conservationnw.org Recovering grizzly bears Mending is better than ending Grizzly bear. Photo © John Hechtel Bears are nothing if not adaptable. Five species survive in some of the harshest environments on earth, from the Gobi desert to the arctic tundra, to the dry thorn scrub of Argentina, places where only the hardiest and most resourceful can live. Brown bears, the general group to which our North American grizzlies belong, persist, albeit in desperately low numbers, in Spain and Italy of all places. In the US, grizzlies once roamed throughout every state west of the Mississippi and down into the plateaus of central Mexico. But unlike other famously adaptable creatures—whitetailed deer, raccoons, and crows immediately come to mind— grizzly bears don't do well around people. That's largely because people don't do well around grizzly bears (psychologically that is). But this is not going to be an article about human/bear behavior and interaction. That's a story for another day. This is about the grizzly bear's place in our little corner of the world and the current options for its future in same. If you look at the grizzly bear's range map in time-lapse fashion from 1800 to the present day you'll see a dramatic process of fraying similar to what happens to your favorite jeans, but, given the absolutely huge scale, much more dramatic. It starts with some loose threads and longer fringing at the bottom or south end as the steady march of Spanish conquistadors and then American settlers, Gold Rush maniacs, and government hunters, efficiently exterminate grizzly bears from "Humans are the primary agent of death in grizzly bears." Schwartz et al. 2010 Texas before the turn of the 20th century. Simultaneously, lighter patches of that "washed out" look start to spread in the thighs as grizzlies are eliminated from Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon by the mid 1930s. The last grizzly bear in the Golden State, aside from the one on the state flag, was killed in 1922. The area above the pockets is chafed and worn grayish as grizzly bears are further persecuted and reduced to small pockets of habitat in Idaho and Washington, even where significant blocks of habitat still remain. By this time they are a distant memory in Colorado and the Dakotas. Of course their fate was largely sealed in the plains states in the mid-1800s with the mass slaughter of every other wild thing that got in the way of pioneers, railways, and manifest destiny. At the very nadir of the grizzly bear's history in North America, specifically in the contiguous US, by the 1960s there are only remnant tiny populations in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and adjoining wilderness areas. The value of these special places looms large in the annals of grizzly bear history in the US as they've provided sources for recovering populations. So at this point the grizzly bear's range is looking more like cut-off shorts than a whole pair of pants. It took the long arm of the Endangered Species Act to step in and stem the tide of grizzly bear retreat. The Act has acted like a fancy hem on the culottes, as it's enabled grizzlies to not only hang on in the "Grizzlies energize some of the grandest landscapes in North America. And all the while, these bears expand our awareness of nature, redefine our relationship with it, encourage us to tie together fragmented ecosystems, and thereby restore wholeness to the living world. How much of this is enough? I don't know, but "Less" doesn't sound like the right answer." —author Doug Chadwick 16 Spring-Summer 2012 www.conservationnw.org

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