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History of Grizzly Bear Management in the Yellowstone Ecosystem
Because Yellowstone National Park serves as the heart of the Yellowstone Ecosystem, many of the natural resources issues related to it are of national and even international interest. Interest in grizzly bear management in the ecosystem is a prime example of this. The history of the park itself tells much of the story about how grizzlies and man have interacted over time in the ecosystem, with an overview of management in the surrounding states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana completing the picture.
Much of the early history of bears within the Yellowstone Ecosystem is detailed in the book, Track of the Grizzly, by Frank Craighead, Jr. PhD., who along with his brother John, in 1959 began the first earnest research about grizzly bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Craigheads studied the bears up until 1971, when politics related to the National Park Service policy of closing the landfills resulted in them severing their connection. Their work helped provide an understanding about grizzly bears that had previously not existed.
Interestingly enough, while the Craigheads were doing their pioneering research, the practice of hunting grizzly bears was stopped in the Yellowstone Ecosystem portion of Montana in 1974, but was permitted in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem until 1990. Wyoming also stopped hunting in 1974, just before the grizzlies in the lower 48 states were listed as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1975. Idaho had stopped hunting grizzly bears back in 1946.
After the grizzlies were listed under the ESA, the separate ecosystems were designated in the first Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan in 1982. Management teams were created and a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) establishing the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) in 1983. In the Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee (YES) was created from State and Federal resource management agencies. In addition to the three state wildlife agencies involved, the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the National Park Service (NPS) and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) made up the management team. Both superintendents of Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park were sent as representatives, as well as the forest supervisors of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, Gallatin National Forest, Custer National Forest, and the Shoshone National Forest. Scientific data collection and analysis was provided by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team and the USFWS served as important, but non-voting members of the subcommittee. Various state Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and USFS representatives have also been members of the committee at various times.
Leadership of the subcommittee rotates on two-year terms and alternates between a federal entity and a state agency. Current chairmanship is held by Larry Timchak, Supervisor of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
As the recovery plan proceeded, it was decided by the YES that it was important to involve not only state agencies and lawmakers in the recovery process, but to also try and include county commissioners and the Native American community. One county commissioner representative per state was added in 2000, and limited tribal representation began in 2003, with members of the Shoshone-Bannock and Northern Arapahoe joining.
To help coordinate educational resources, the Information and Education Working Group was created in 2002. This group works alongside the official YES Information & Education Subcommittee to maximize outreach to the public on bear related issues. Members of this group have included The Center for Wildlife Information (CWI), Defenders of Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, National Parks Conservation Association, and the Predator Conservation Alliance.
YES has shown that recovery and delisting is possible if all entities work together toward a common goal. After nearly two decades of on the ground management and monitoring, the mid-nineties saw the start of large scale public involvement starting with proposed habitat-based recovery criteria.
In 2000, the draft Conservation Strategy, the plan required to manage a delisted grizzly bear population, was first taken out to the public. This document was revised based on public comment and was finalized in March of 2007, just prior to delisting. A tri-state governors panel organized in 2001, oversaw the creation of teams within each state to draft state management plans for implementation once the grizzly was delisted. All three states completed their plans in 2002, with Wyoming making revisions in 2005. In 2005, the USWFS released the information on the Distinct Population Segment (DPS) for the Yellowstone Ecosystem. During this same time period, the national forests within the ecosystem worked to include grizzly bear related changes within the ongoing forest plan amendment process that was completed in 2006.
The culmination of all these agencies and their efforts was the recovery and official delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear as a threatened species in March of 2007. Even though the grizzly has been delisted, management of the bears still remains a highly coordinated effort. With the delisting, YES has been transformed into the Yellowstone Grizzly Coordinating Committee (YGCC). Aside from the name change, very little else has changed about the group. The Conservation Strategy requires that careful joint management be continued. The status of the bear on federal lands remains virtually unchanged from pre-delisting. Cooperative management will be an important key to insuring best efforts to recover and manage the bear. Even though hunting of grizzly bears was included within each of the state plans, harvest will be strictly regulated and kept within the sustainable mortality parameters detailed in the Conservation Strategy. Currently, funding from the USFWS is assisting the states and other agencies in managing the delisted population, but developing mechanisms for future funding remains a key issue for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee.
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