NEWS

Grizzly expansion onto plains sparks concerns

Karl Puckett
kpuckett@greatfallstribune.com
Gary Bertellotti, Region 4 supervisor for the MT Fish Wildlife and Parks, opens up Tuesday evening’s informational meeting on grizzly bears in the Valier High School gymnasium.

VALIER – More than 200 people in this community of 500 showed up for a meeting on northcentral Montana’s expanding plains grizzly bear population, many of them livestock producers who told state bear managers they want them to do more to keep bears out of farm and ranch country.

Maggie Nutter, president of the Marias River Livestock Association, said there is a “really big concern” about bears dispersing to the prairie from Rocky Mountain Front, which is part of the 12,000-square-mile Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

The front stretches some 190 miles from south of Glacier National Park south to the community of Lincoln, and marks the meeting of the Rocky Mountains and the plains.

The Front is part of the 1,000-bear Northern Continental Ecosystem Population, which is expanding, and bears are moving farther out on the prairie dominated by wheat and barley fields, cattle ranches and visited by bird hunters in the fall.

As of May 18, bears had killed 22 cattle on the Rocky Mountain Front, compared to 48 cattle and sheep killed all of last year, Nutter said.

Cattle can be replaced, she said.

“If it’s a child or an elder or family member, you can’t replace them,” she said.

FWP should be more aggressive in using the tools available to the agency to train bears not to be around humans, Nutter said. That includes more use of firing cracker shells from guns and using dogs to chase bears, she said. The agency also needs more staff to deal with grizzly bear complaints, she said.

People sign in at the Valier High gymnasium before Tuesday’s FWP meeting on grizzly bears on the Rocky Mountain Front.

“They need to prioritize and put people here,” Nutter said. “I just don’t think those tools are being used enough.”

Gary Bertellotti, supervisor of FWP’s Region 4, said the meeting was a response to complaints about grizzly bears sighted in areas where they are not expected to be seen, such as Conrad and Valier.

The number of sightings and livestock conflicts has been exceptional this year, he said. FWP wanted to hear from the public, educate people on why more bears are being seen and discuss solutions.

Even though this is an exceptional year in terms of the high number of sightings and conflicts, Bertellotti said, “The future is bears are going to be on the landscape.”

“The reality of it is grizzly bears, like wolves, are an endangered species,” Bertellotti said. “There are federal laws that confine us to certain measures of doing things.”

Jodi Bush of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the grizzly bear was listed as threatened in 1975 and now efforts are underway to remove the bear from the list.

“We are so close,” she said.

Bears are following rivers originating in the mountains such as the Sun and Teton onto open areas of farm fields and ranch lands that haven’t served as grizzly bear habitat for a century.

Dave McEwen, president of the Montana Wool Growers Association, also said FWP needs to do more to deal with grizzlies.

“The issue is we have to live with the bear,” McEwen said. “That’s a fact of life in Montana. But living with the bear is expensive. FWP has done nothing to help the private property owner or the private citizen to live with the bear either with conflict resolution or mediation of conflicts.”

FWP, he said, doesn’t contribute enough money to the public so people can put up electric fences, and they should be hiring more people to help keep bears out of town.

Fish Wildlife and Parks held an informational meeting on grizzly bears visiting the plains, Tuesday in the Valier High School gym.

The state needs an agency that’s willing to manage grizzly bears or people are going to start taking management into their own hands because “they’re tired of it,” McEwen said.

“The ones they need to worry about are the people who aren’t here tonight,” McEwen said. “They’ve made their management decisions.”

The crowd applauded after McEwen and Nutter spoke.

Mike Madel, a FWP grizzly bear management specialist, said the last hunting season for grizzly bears occurred in 1991. A hunting season, when implemented, will help the situation.

The majority of conflicts involving grizzly bears used to be in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the mountains. Now most of the conflicts occur on private land farther from the mountains, Madel said.

“We continue to see this grizzly bear population increasing and expanding out farther,” Madel said.

For the last 10 years, the NCDE grizzly population has increased 2.3 percent annually to the current population of more than 1,000 bears.

“It’s one of the last places where grizzly bears occur out on prairie grasslands in the world,” Madel said.

A lot of people have said there are more and more bears in the mountains and pushing bears to the east onto the prairie, but there are just as many grizzly bears back in the mountains, Madel said.

Females are teaching their young to disperse onto the prairie.

Ten years ago it was rare to see adult male bears on the prairie but they’re moving east now, too, Madel said.

There is strong evidence that the true plains grizzly bear population is increasing proportionately to the overall population, he said.

“Those are the type of bears many of you are seeing and dealing with,” Madel said.

Although there are livestock depredations and run-ins between bears and hunters, there are very few conflicts considering the large area bears are located in, Madel said.

The vast majority of grizzly do not cause livestock depredations, but all bears on the Front feed on livestock carcasses, Madel said.

“We’re not disagreeing that bears don’t belong in Valier,” Madel said.

Madel said FWP doesn’t use rubber bullets, cracker shells or bear dogs in town because there’s a risk of chasing bears into people in the streets. The best way to deal with bears in communities is to escort bears out of town, he said.

Valier Mayor Ray Bukoveckas said the meeting was called for education and that FWP called him about conducting it, which he said was a “wonderful idea.”

“One thing people don’t realize is the federal government ties their hands quite a lot,” Bukoveckas said.

The meeting was conducted in the Valier School gymnasium where 280 chairs still were set up from Sunday’s graduation. Most of the chairs were full.

He said he’s receiving complaints from residents from residents about bears being in the area. Residents are worried about children. Bukoveckas said he’s worried about kids, too, and people who camp in the area being unaware that bears are around.

“I think the most permanent solution is to write to our congressman and get the grizzly bear delisted up this way,” Bukoveckas said.

“We’re living with this,” Bukoveckas added. “The people in Washington don’t.”

George Edwards of the Montana Livestock Board explained that some funding is available for producers to compensate them for losses and for preventative measures such as guard dogs.

“Hey George,” somebody yelled from the back, “what’s a payout on a young child or old person?”

Mike Hogan of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, which responds to predators that kill livestock, told producers that it’s important to preserve evidence if a bear kills livestock. “We need to determine that it was killed for you to get paid,” Hogan said.

There have been 18 confirmed livestock attacks by grizzly bears on the Blackfeet Reservation this spring, said Dan Carney, a tribal wildlife biologist.

Follow Karl Puckett on Twitter @GFTrib_KPuckett.