The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is telling people they should be prepared to run into grizzlies anywhere west of Billings – but it remains unclear whether a long expected mingling of Wyoming and Montana bears is imminent.
“We can’t tell with certainty that we haven’t had bears moving between those two populations,” Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Greg Lemon told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
Most recently, there was a confirmed sighting early this summer of a grizzly in southwest Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains. That’s a place where grizzly bears haven’t been spotted in decades.
It’s typically young male grizzlies that take off on long-distance adventures. But the age and sex of the Tobacco Roots grizzly hasn’t been determined, Lemon said.
Does that mean grizzlies are moving toward a major mingling between two populations centered in Wyoming and Montana? Probably not quite yet, a Wyoming bear expert said.
“The Tobacco Roots are a stepping stone” toward genetic exchange, retired federal ecologist Chuck Neal of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.
“But it’s a fragile stepping stone,” he added.
‘Island Ranges’
So far, the West’s two main populations of grizzlies have remained essentially separated.
About 1,100 bears make up the Northern Continental Divide population, radiating out of Montana’s Glacier National Park.
And a roughly equal number of grizzlies are thought to live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, centered in the heart of northwest Wyoming’s Yellowstone country.
Those two populations could be within 60 miles of each other in some places, and a grizzly in the Tobacco Roots opens new possibilities, Neal said.
The Tobacco Roots are one of the isolated “island ranges” in southwest Montana, he added. If a bear could get across open county to the south, it could get into continuous mountain ranges that would take it into Wyoming.
And adding to the intrigue is the fact that biologists haven’t determined where the grizzly seen traipsing through the Tobacco Roots came from, Lemon said.
Lacking DNA samples from the bear, there’s no way of confirming which population it came from. But the Greater Yellowstone population is the one closer to that area, he said.
Growing Population Or Genetic Exchange?
By the mid-1970s, the grizzly population in the Lower 48 was barely hanging on by a claw. Fewer than 100 of them were left, including some holed up in Yellowstone National Park.
Grizzlies in the Lower 48 were put under federal endangered species protection in 1975.
Since then, they’ve increased in numbers and range across Wyoming, Montana and parts of Idaho. In north-central Montana, they’ve been pushing far out into the open prairies.
Last summer, there was excitement when a grizzly was spotted on the Montana side of the Pryor Mountains. It was near the Wyoming state line, in a place where grizzlies hadn’t been seen since the late 1800s.
And there was a huge buzz this spring when a grizzly bear was confirmed in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. It was a lone bear that was killed by wildlife agents after it preyed on cattle near Ten Sleep.
With so many grizzlies showing up in so many places, many have argued it’s well past time to delist them and turn management of the bears over to the state.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has plans in place for a grizzly hunting season if and when that happens. And agency director Brian Nesvik told members of the U.S. Congress last year that he favors delisting grizzlies.
But Neal and other conservationists argue that full recovery won’t happen unless and until there is significant genetic exchange between the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone populations.
The sheer number of bears doesn’t matter if that genetic exchange isn’t happening, they claim.
Neal added that getting bears “into Central Idaho” – in the remote Bitterroot-Selway region – is also key to recovery.
Delisting efforts reached a fever pitch last year, with Wyoming’s U.S. Congressional delegation and Gov. Mark Gordon all clamoring for it to happen. Then those efforts fizzled.
But delisting could be warming up again. During recent hearings in Washington, D.C., Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman again told federal wildlife officials that grizzly delisting is overdue.
‘The Yuppies Haven’t Found It Yet’
Though a bear in the Tobacco Roots, as well as grizzlies popping up elsewhere raises hopes, the arguments over delisting could still be deadlocked.
But wildlife overpasses might break the impasse, Neal said.
As the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone grizzlies continue to inch ever closer to each other, Interstate highways in Montana remain a significant barrier between them, Neal said.
“A lone bear occasionally making it across I-90” isn’t going to do the trick, he said.
What might pave the way for widespread grizzly romance between populations would be an overpass or overpasses across isolated stretches of Interstate 15, running between southwest Montana and the Idaho state line.
“That’s one of the least-developed parts of southwest Montana. The yuppies haven’t found it yet,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
