Protecting Us from Ourselves
On this day, 50 years ago, the Grizzly Bear was given threatened species status.
While better than the alternative, my advancing age means that I don’t just spring out of bed each morning to lace up my running shoes like I used to do when I lived in Brooklyn in my 20s.
These days, I slowly blink my eyes open, probably head to the restroom and then slink back into bed for a few more minutes of rest. I try to make this time at least somewhat productive by listening to the livestream of my local NPR station, WFYI. Morning Edition is usually mid-stride as I gather a few bits of news to start my day just slightly more prepared than when I thankfully woke up a handful of minutes earlier.
This morning Steve Inskeep set my brain in motion with this gem, this day - July 28 - fifty years ago, the Grizzly Bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
A quick Google search surfaced a PDF of the actual press release.
The action means that the grizzly bear, an aggressive animal that is highly intolerant of man, now receives Federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.
A quote that is often attributed to Game of Thrones character Tywin Lannister popped into my head while reading this, “a lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep.”
The press release continues:
Although the grizzly population has remained fairly stable for the last 50 years, increasing human activity such as road building and developments that affect the grizzly's remaining habitat prompted its listing as a threatened species.
This really isn’t so much a case of the Grizz being intolerant of man, but man seeing the Grizz as a roadblock in materializing its twisted belief in Manifest Destiny. We are clearly the intolerant ones in hindsight.
At this point in time in 1975, the press release states that are “several hundred” grizzlies left in the United States, primarily in three areas; the Selway-Bitterroot in Idaho and Montana, the Yellowstone area, and the Bob Marshall in Montana. “Most of these ecosystems are composed of Federal lands.”
It goes on to explain that Grizzly Bears need to be left undisturbed. With access to their usual food sources, they don’t seek out man or man’s farms (full of potential food in the form of livestock if pressed). But if they start to become comfortable around human animals, conflict is bound to occur.
Without the addition of guns, it is not a conflict human animals are likely to win.
Adult male Grizzly Bears can tip the scales at more than 800lbs and top out at eight feet tall. They have long sharp claws and a piece of research from Montana State University suggests they have the strength of two-and-a-half to five humans. I don’t care how drunk your Uncle is when he claimed he took one down back in ‘82, humans don’t stand much of a chance in coming out of conflict victorious without a little help (by help, I mean guns, I am talking about guns here in case it is not clear).
Back in January, under the Biden administration, the protected status of Grizzly Bears was reinforced. The U.S. and Wildlife Service rejected petitions from the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to delist the bears, disagreeing that the concentration of bears was significant enough to warrant removing the protection.
The Grizzly Bear is a victim of its own success.
As populations have recovered since 1975, hitting around 2,000 bears, their range has expanded. This brought about the increased Grizzly Bear/human conflict that the original Department of the Interior press release warned of. Thus, some want the protections removed, presumably so they can manage these interactions as they see fit, which probably means with a gun or a trap or some other violent measure of control.
However, this view is a little shortsighted.
Historically, about 50,000 grizzly bears were believed to roam the western U.S. between the Mexican and Canadian borders. Nearly all of those bears were killed by the 1950s through conflicts with livestock ranchers and habitat destruction. By the 1960s, the only remaining strongholds were in national parks and remote corners of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington. (Montana Free Press)
In addition to encroaching on the Grizzly Bear’s habitat, we also did it quite a disservice in introducing it to human food in the Yellowstone area.
In a July article by Christine Peterson for Wired, it is noted that from the early 1900s to the 1970s, people would gather at open-air landfills in Yellowstone National Park to see Grizzly Bears gorge themselves on human leftovers. This created a reliance by Grizzly Bears on humans for food, and increased human/bear conflict:
The bears were in dangerous proximity to humans: Hungry bears tore at open car windows. Tourists posed a little too close with their film cameras. Yellowstone park rangers logged dozens of injuries each year—nearly 50 on average.
While 2,000 Grizz is a great jump from around 600 in 1975, it is still a far cry from the 50,000 who roamed these lands before humans began moving in on their territory. And if tens of thousands were killed off in just a few decades, what makes you think we won't be right back in this situation ten years from now, probably less? We only have more sophisticated guns, traps and tracking devices.
All of this creates a very complicated issue.
The Endangered Species Act is meant to protect species that are threatened so that they can recover. Once they recover and don’t face foreseeable threats, they should be delisted.
For some, like Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, who just introduced another bill to delist the Grizzly Bear, the jump from a few hundred to a few thousand is enough. Now that the Grizz is stretching beyond its designated recovery zone, it should be delisted and management handed back to the states.
Others are concerned about keeping the Grizzly Bear on the threatened species list for too long. If it is left on indefinitely, it could face the same fate as the Gray Wolf, which Congress originally delisted in 2011, based on political will more than science.
The Gray Wolf’s delisting was later reversed by the courts after a lot of back and forth, but several Republicans are attempting to get it delisted again. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study found poachers and hunters killed a third of the state’s population after the wolf was delisted in 2021.
The most compelling case to maintain protection introduces a threat that wasn’t outlined as part of the original Endangered Species Act - climate change. And if climate change is successfully included as a foreseeable threat under the Endangered Species Act, it could have huge implications for the protection of many more species of plants and animals.
Whitebark Pine is a crucial food source for Grizzly Bears in the Yellowstone region. In 2022, the Whitebark itself was listed under the Endangered Species Act thanks to three threats.
First is a fungus. White pine blister rust has wiped out more than 325M trees.
Second is the Mountain Pine Beetle, which has killed millions more mature trees.
The third is climate change. The Whitebark Pine is a “relic from the ice age,” and currently only exists in the highest and coldest areas of the region. As the planet warms, the potential habitat for the Whitebark Pine shrinks and this warming may also be accelerating the work of the beetle and fungus.
If the Whitebark Pine continues to decline, its fatty seeds that help the Grizzly Bear see through hibernation will disappear. This would require the Grizz to find sufficient supplies of alternative food sources.
In just a few years, the recovery success of the Grizzly Bear could be reversed by the decline of the Whitebark Pine. The other potential reversal is down to the States themselves.
If the Grizzly is delisted, management will be handed over to the states. The problem that many are identifying is that at a time when the Trump administration is cutting budgets and staff for scientific research and wild spaces generally, who is going to reign in the states if they don’t provide sufficient protections? Wired’s piece points out that Wyoming has already set out Grizzly Bear hunting season regulations in the event the species is delisted.
“We’re seeing attacks on public land agencies, the sidelining of science, predator-hostile politicians muscling into wildlife decisions, and relentless pressure from private land development. Walking away from the grizzly now—after all we’ve invested—just feels like the worst possible timing.” - Chris Servheen, leader the Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery program for 35 years in Wired
So what can we do?
If you’ve ever read Ed Abbey’s famous book ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’ or its sequel ‘Heyduke Lives!’, you know the man Doug Peacock by deed, even if not by name.
While no longer with the organization, Peacock (the inspiration for George Heyduke in Abbey’s books) co-founded Save the Yellowstone Grizzly (STYG) after he credited the bear with saving his life after returning from duty in the Vietnam War.
He outlined his relationships with the Grizz in a National Geographic interview:
In grizzly country, humans are put in their proper place—you are not the dominant creature on the landscape. It’s a matter of getting yourself outside yourself. Your senses are forced outward. You see better. You smell better. It’s not yourself which is the center of the universe. It’s an enforced humility.
While I can’t recommend heading out in search of Grizzly Bears yourself, if you believe in keeping them protected, I encourage you to sign Save the Yellowstone Grizzly’s petition.
The petition gathers support behind the belief that climate change is a serious threat to the Grizzly Bear and therefore, it needs to maintain its protected status despite its recovery. I’ve included a short documentary film from STYG at the bottom of this post outlining the issue. It’s narrated by the great actor and Grizzly Bear supporter Jeff Bridges.
I’d also encourage you to contact your congressional representative. (You can find that person here.)
If Rep. Hageman’s bill to delist the Grizzly Bear passes the full House, it will reissue the 2017 attempt from the Trump administration (that was overturned in 2020 by a federal circuit court) to remove its protected status. It has already made it out of committee.
In the end, the protected status of the Grizzly Bear is really about protecting humans from ourselves, from our worst instincts.
Our actions drove the Grizzly Bear to near extinction. We moved in on its territory. We changed its diet to rely on us as a food source. We have accelerated global warming causing the Whitebark Pine, one of its primary food sources, to have to be added itself to the Endangered Species list.
At every turn, we have stacked the deck against this great bear.
That’s why I don’t believe that we’ll be able to rein in the worst of our actions in the future if the Grizz is delisted and we’re left to our own devices.
I don’t believe that trophy hunting won’t be expanded if the Grizzly Bear is delisted. I don’t believe that we’ll act on climate change in a meaningful enough way to protect the food sources of the Grizz and the food sources of many other non-human animals. I don’t believe that we’ll recognize that the Endangered Species Act is not actually there to just protect flora and fauna like the Grizzly Bear and Whitebark Pine, but to protect them from us and to protect ourselves from our own worst actions.
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