Nation’s grizzly recovery coordinator retiring after 35 years in ‘radical center’

Chris Servheen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the nation’s first and only grizzly bear recovery coordinator, is retiring 35 years after he was hired to look out for the interests of the threatened species that he says is now recovered even though it remains protected under the Endangered Species Act.

“My objective 35 years ago was to recover the population, and I’ve done that,” Servheen said Wednesday, when he confirmed his retirement plans with the Tribune.

Servheen plans to step down at the end of the month, but he’ll continue as an adjunct research professor at the University of Montana where he has taught a course on international wildlife conservation for the past 18 years.

Servheen, who is based at UM in Missoula, told land and bears managers about his pending retirement at a meeting of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee in Choteau on Tuesday.

“Summer’s coming. The backcountry is opening up and it’s calling to me, and that’s where I want to be,” said Servheen, 65, on Wednesday.

The main reason he is retiring is so he can spend more time in the backcountry with his kids while he’s still agile and active, with the chance of seeing grizzly bears, rather than sitting in meetings talking about them, he said.

In 1975, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the grizzly bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in the Lower 48 states. When Lewis and Clark explored the West in the early 1800s, an estimated 50,000 grizzly bears roamed between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains, across vast stretches of open and unpopulated land. When pioneers moved in, numbers drastically declined.

Today, 1,400 to 1,700 wild grizzly bears remain in the west, most of them in Montana and Wyoming.

Servheen said he’s pleased with the progress that’s been made in grizzly bear recovery in the past 35 years, noting that three times as many bears now occupy twice the range compared to when he was hired.

“It gives me a good feeling to see the bears out there,” Servheen said.

In 1981, Servheen became the first person in the nation to coordinate the recovery of a threatened or endangered species.

The concept of a recovery coordinator was new at the time, he said.

In effect, Servheen said, he was hired by taxpayers to look after the bears.

Later, coordinators also were hired to oversee recovery of other species including the manatee, condor and wolf.

“It was a good concept,” Servheen said.

But grizzly bear recovery was especially challenging compared to other species, with one reason being “bald eagles don’t eat livestock,” Servheen said.

And the job required thick skin because grizzly bear recovery is an emotional subject with widely varying opinions.

Some people want bears everywhere, Servheen said, while others don’t want them anywhere.

“I’ve tried to main a position in what I call the radical center,” Servheen said. “I’m right in the middle balancing the needs of people with bears.”

His job remains coordinating state, tribal and federal agencies with jurisdiction over bear habitat, as well as grizzly research and management.

Getting the multiple agencies to work together wasn’t easy when he first started, he said.

The continuity in the position has been beneficial in recovery efforts, he said.

“I’m like the only guy left that was here when we all started,” he said.

Millions of dollars have been invested in recovering the grizzly bear population with funds needed for management, efforts to clean up garbage disposal and for bear managers who work to reduce bear-human conflicts, he said.

The grizzly bear population of the 9,200-square-mile Yellowstone National Park area is 717 today.

Servheen wrote the proposed rule to delist that population, which is now out for public comment.

The population of grizzly bears in the 9,600-square-mile Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in northwestern and northcentral Montana is 960. That population includes Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall, Great Bear and Scapegoat wilderness areas, Mission Mountains, surrounding national forest lands and the Rocky Mountain Front. A rule to delist that population has yet to be written.

Servheen considers both the Yellowstone and NCDE populations recovered, even if they are still listed as threatened.

The populations in the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly recovery zone in northwestern Montana and northeastern Idaho, and Washington’s Selkirk Mountains, has doubled, he said.

Less progress has been made in recovery efforts of smaller populations in the Bitterroot Mountains in western Montana and central Idaho and North Cascades in Washington, he said.

Delisting of the bears is a legal process that requires public comments, hearings and eventually litigation, and it is a separate issue from recovery, Servheen said.

In deciding to retire, Servheen said he had to balance whether he wanted to wait around for the delisting process to be completed with spending his time in the backcountry and fly-fishing.

Frustration with progress in delisting grizzly bears or criticism he took on the job were not factors in his decision to retire, he said.

“I think I’ve put my time in,” Servheen said. “The idea of recovery is important to me. If they weren’t recovered, those two big populations, I would be concerned about leaving.”

Wayne Kasworm of the Fish and Wildlife Service, a grizzly bear biologist who has worked for Servheen for 20 years and is leading grizzly recovery efforts in the Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirks, will become acting recovering coordinator. Jennifer Fortin-Noreus, a postdoctoral researcher, will continue to work as a technical expert in the grizzly bear recovery program.