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.

ASHLAND – Two of the state’s largest wildfires have merged even as state and federal authorities pour more resources into the battle.

The Deadman Fire and the Anderson Fire merged on Sunday, according to the Rosebud County Disaster and Emergency Services, creating a combined wildfire with a total estimated area at nearly 16,000 acres. There was 20 percent containment reported on the Deadman Fire.

The previous largest wildfire in the state near Helena, the Horse Gulch Fire, was estimated Monday at just under 13,000 acres.

The two merged fires will now be referred to as the Deadman Fire, according to fire officials. The wildfires and several others in the region were started by dry lightning on July 12 and 13, including the McGhee, Prairie Dog, Hackley, and Four-Mile fires. The total combined area of the wildfires is estimated at 22,000 acres.

A Northern Rockies Complex Incident Management Team 3 took command of these fires at 6 a.m. Monday, fire officials said. Some evacuations have been ordered.

Deadman Fire in Rosebud County forces residents to evacuate

Here’s the most current status of the fires from the Rosebud County Disaster and Emergency Services:

CURRENT STATUS
Landowners, ranchers, local fire departments, and state and federal land agencies have worked incredibly hard the past several days fighting these fires and have made significant progress. Crews and landowners have been building miles of fire lines and conducting burnout operations to gain ground. Last night, the McGhee Fire pushed northwest toward Birney. Today, the Flathead Interagency Hotshot Crew and other resources will be working to connect pieces of fire line to secure that part of the fire. The prevailing wind direction today should help. The team is assessing needs, developing a plan, and ordering resources, although as fire season picks up in Montana, resources will begin to be stretched.

WEATHER AND FIRE BEHAVIOR
Fuel moistures are low, making fire behavior erratic even without strong winds. Fire continues to carry in the grass and mixed shrubs, even overnight. Spotting may be an issue throughout the day, especially as winds increase. Hot and dry conditions are expected into the foreseeable future.

CLOSURES AND SPECIAL MESSAGES
An evacuation warning remains in place for residents along the Tongue River Road from the Tongue River Bridge at Wall Creek to the southern Rosebud County line. Specific closure information and maps on the Rosebud and/or Big Horn County Facebook Pages.

Rosebud County Disaster and Emergency Services

It’s truly a mystery right now watching the incredible efforts by Montana’s Secretary of State, Christi Jacobsen, to try and disqualify voters who signed citizen initiatives from being counted.   Their twisted logic and faulty interpretation of the Montana Constitution reflects a deep paranoia on the part of the Republicans toward Montana’s citizens and voters.

The burning question is “what are they so afraid of?”

It doesn’t take a long memory to recall how the GOP went into Trump-fueled hysterics over election integrity in 2020, in which Republicans won every statewide office.

Other than mimicking Trump’s endless and baseless “stolen election” lies, one might wonder what they intended to find and why?  What, were the Republicans going to say their own election victories were illegitimate and challenge the right of their own candidates to hold office?  Were they going to call for endless recounts so maybe a hapless Democrat could win at least one statewide office?

Since none of that sounds even marginally reasonable, it appears the GOP simply doesn’t trust the good people of Montana — nor the hundreds of election workers who have and continue to dedicate themselves to free, open, and dang near error-free elections as they have for many years.

Were one to look at what’s going on now — and has gone on in the past — it seems pretty clear that the Republicans are trying their best to gut Montana’s constitutionally-guaranteed right to the citizen initiative process.  And why might they being doing so?  Because the GOP cannot exert the kind of absolute control over citizen initiatives that they can and do enforce in the legislative and executive branches.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize Montana’s citizens have passed initiatives the legislature never would have let out of the first committee.  Going way back to 1978, the good and sensible voters of Montana passed an initiative to mandate that citizens had the right to vote on the installation of nuclear power plants in our state.  That was overturned on a GOP party-line vote in the 2021 legislative session, transferring the authority away from the citizens and to, of course, the legislature. 

Then there was the citizens initiative to ban the use of cyanide heap leach gold mining Montanans approved in 1998, which still stands despite numerous efforts to overturn it.  Does anyone believe the legislature would ever have passed a law to prohibit the mining industry from poisoning our waters with cyanide?

Or how about the citizens initiatives legalizing the use of both medicinal (2004) and recreational (2020) marijuana?  The legislature would never have approved such laws and was sued for wading into the initiative’s language after the election to weaken and alter the provisions the citizens overwhelmingly approved.

Now, Jacobsen’s office is being sued — this time by proponents of three pending initiatives. CI-128 asks voters to approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access, CI-126, which instills open primaries, and C1-127, which requires a candidate to receive over 50% of the vote to win.  Ironically, the proponents of the election initiatives are Jacobsen’s fellow Republicans.

It’s a foundational truth that power never relinquishes power without a fight.

What’s strange is that Montana’s Republican Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Governor all seem to fear their almost unassailable hold on power is somehow being threatened by the very citizens they were elected to serve — not command, control, and intimidate for exercising their constitutional right to the initiative process.