Conservation Northwest

Keeping the Northwest wild Summer 2016 3 time to restore the North Cascades grizzly View from the Director mitch Friedman Executive Director, mitch@conservationnw.org table of contents 4 Restoring grizzly bears Update on North Cascades EIS 5 Friends of the North Cascades Grizzly Our new coalition to show support 6 Just right for grizzlies Why the North Cascades are great habitat 8 Living with grizzly bears Coexisting successfully in bear country 9 Searching for ghost bears Monitoring for North Cascades grizzlies 10 Northeast Washington wilderness Opportunity to protect the Columbia Highlands 12 Best Northwest wildlife hikes Catch a glimpse or experience their home 14 Meet our Board: Bert Loosmore Get to know our newest Board member 15 Conservation gear Show your support with stickers, hoodies, and more Grizzly bear cubs. It's time to bring them back to the North Cascades. Photo: © TDImage/iStockphoto.com I often hear people suggest that the North Cascades can receive migrating grizzly bears from the wilds of British Columbia. Sadly, that isn't the case. As proud as I am to observe that, even as the human population has boomed here over the past couple decades, our region has been getting wilder by most measures, grizzly bears are a big exception to that trend. Yes, we've gained protection for old forests, roadless areas and a number of key habitat linkages. And yes, fishers, wolver- ines and wolves have returned. But grizzly bears have declined over this same period. is is humbling and confounding. I founded Conservation Northwest in 1989 in part to champion grizzlies and their habitat in the North Cascades. A grizzly was on our original logo. At that time there probably were a couple dozen grizz in this border-spanning ecosystem, and sightings were somewhat more common. We gained a government commitment to bear recovery in 1993, a commitment that protected habitat and promoted backcountry behaviors like clean camps and bear awareness to help these threatened wild icons. But while we knew then as now that the small grizzly population couldn't survive without the addition of a few bears from elsewhere to boost the gene pool, for over 20 years we've been unable to move the U.S. government to take that action. And slowly the grizzly population dwin- dled to its present, paltry condition. e latest agency estimates suggest fewer than ten animals. at's a generous figure. By any measure, it is likely the most at-risk bear population in North America. If bears could migrate to the Cascades from Canadian populations, they would have been doing so. But the sad fact is that grizzly bear populations across southwest B.C. are themselves too small and struggling to produce bears motivated enough to decamp for here. And any bear that might do so would face challenges in getting from there to here, including crossing the heavily trafficked Fraser River Valley. So it falls on us to move some bears to the Cascades. It also falls on us to help recover those other bear populations in the B.C. Coast and Chilcotin ranges, and to gain habitat protections and access (road) management policies that will allow fu- ture bears to safely move between subpopulations, bringing genetic vigor and hope with them. I am deeply heartened that the National Park Service and other agencies are now working hard studying options for restoring a healthy population of grizzly bears in the North Cascades. And I'm proud and energized by the work we're doing with Canadian First Nations and conservation partners through the Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative to recover and link grizzly populations across our region. e North Cascades is the only place in the Lower 48 where we stand much chance of having grizzly bears outside of the Rocky Mountains. At nearly 10,000 square miles, it's one of the largest contiguous areas of wild public land in the Ameri- can West. We've demonstrated that we can make nature healthier and wilder in the Northwest. My goal is that just five years from now, the return of grizzly bears will have expanded our list of positively wild trends in our great region. View from the Director

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