Bear-human conflicts discussed at Polson grizzly meeting
POLSON — Wildlife management officials refer to it as “the case of the Stevensville bear.”
What happened with this particular bear, as the recently appointed Grizzly Bear Advisory Council came to find out during the group’s meeting in Polson last week, is indicative of what is to come for much of Montana. And it’s one of many looming issues the council has been tasked with addressing in a report that will be presented to Gov. Steve Bullock in August.
In this case, a sub-adult male grizzly bear had wandered onto a golf course in Stevensville in 2018 and started digging holes in search of worms. Officials with Monana Fish, Wildlife and Parks captured the bear and relocated it to the Lower Blackfoot Valley, away from populated areas. But when the bear came out of his den in the spring of 2019, he ended up close to residences in the Seeley Valley instead.
“We eventually found him in a winter’s worth of trash in a trailer,” said Jamie Jonkel, a state bear management specialist. “We decided to relocate him again and give him another chance, but we found him on porches and in barns getting himself into trouble. He had become food-conditioned.”
So FWP officials eventually removed the bear that summer — a polite synonym for euthanize, used often in wildlife management.
Although this wasn’t the first time a grizzly had found itself in the middle of civilization, it was an uncomfortable reminder of what happens when humans and bears compete for natural resources. And as these errant bears become more common, wildlife officials are at a loss as to how humans and bears can efficiently and successfully coexist.
“We want you council members to know that scenarios like this are only going to become more common,” Jonkel told the council. “We need recommendations on what to do with these types of bears and we need them soon.”
The topic of transplant and relocation protocols for grizzly bears consumed the majority of council discussion at Thursday’s meeting. The 18-member group has four more public meetings before submitting recommendations to the governor that may be used to determine future policies on how to manage Montana’s growing population numbers of grizzlies.
“They’ve now stabilized. But nobody told the bear they were supposed to only live in the wilderness and it turns out we don’t know whether we are prepared to recover the griz across the state,” said Mike Thompson with FWP’s Region 2.
Multiple researchers addressed the council, detailing scenarios of relocation, or when a bear is moved to an already bear-occupied portion of a recovery zone. And the takeaway was there are few protocols in place for dealing with bears like the one in Stevensville. That is, a grizzly that is a non-target bear without much of a history of conflict but has found itself encroaching on, and eventually disturbing human civilization in some capacity.
Stacy Courville, a wildlife biologist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, talked about the slim rate of success his team has had in relocating bears from the Flathead Reservation to areas such as Arlee and Glacier National Park.
“The majority of the bears I relocate to the north in the Flathead or Glacier, don’t stay there,” Courville explained. “I don’t know what the solution to that is, but the conflict bears that are moved a long ways don’t have high success rates.”
The term “success” is broad, but generally is measured by whether the bear survives in its new habitat or whether the bear manages to stay away from civilization and out of trouble. For Courville, he said relocations are often unsuccessful because “they just bounce all over the place, sometimes wandering 80 to 100 miles back to where we first picked them up.” He added that relocating is sometimes just a way to buy officials time to fix a problem before the bear comes back whether it be removing an attractant, installing certain bear-resistant trash containers or building an electric fence.
“There is always a discussion about what the bear has done, where we should move it. But a lot of times we don’t have a choice and we remove,” Courville said.
The sentiment was one shared by other wildlife managers who seem to be running out of options for relocation as populations grow. And as space becomes limited, officials are considering transplantation instead, or the movement of a bear into an area that is “unoccupied” by grizzlies for the purpose of establishing bears in that location. For example, in recent years there has been extensive discussion on whether bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem should be transplanted to the Bitterroot, which would involve extensive collaboration with Idaho, where most of the Bitterroot lies. This is also different from augmentation, or the process of moving a bear from one recovery zone to another in order to enhance a population, which is currently ongoing in the Cabinet-Yaak.
However, Thompson said one of the biggest challenges with both relocation and transplantation is getting a thumbs-up from Montanans.
“If you care about the griz as a species and the possibility of recovering the bear, you need permission for the bear that we touched to live there. What we bump up against is societal permission,” Thompson said.
Tolerance for grizzlies throughout the state seems to vary area to area, but many are against the animals being brought into their area.
Trina Jo Bradley, a council member and ranch owner from Valier, said this is true in her area of the state, where “most people don’t want bears” and “there is zero social tolerance” for the animals.
Still, an underlying consensus among most was that bears are coming whether people want them or not. They are wandering farther and expanding into areas they previously haven’t occupied in decades, and often on their own.
“You can’t build a fence along the crest of the Bitterroot for example. If they aren’t there already, they’re coming,” said council member Caroline Byrd of Bozeman.
Instead of focusing on how to keep bears away from certain areas, the council discussed at length ways to help communities handle grizzly bears when they eventually saunter their way.
“The Stevensville bear is representative of a population of bears that is growing in this state. As a council, you all are charged not with deciding whether a bear should be somewhere, but how we manage bears when they are in those spaces,” said Randy Arnold with FWP Region 2.
The council discussed recommending uniform statewide requirements for bear-safe food storage receptacles for those living near recovery areas, free educational conferences to discuss how people can better live with bears and erecting more signs in areas where bears are frequenting or in areas where bears have been relocated or transplanted.
At one point, several council members asked wildlife leaders for their input on what they should recommend the governor do in regard to public permission for transplant and relocation, among other things. While presenters offered insights into their personal challenges, when it came down to specific recommendations, the response from Jonkle, which was echoed in some fashion by several others in attendance was, “that’s for you, the council, to decide.”
The council’s next meeting is at the end of February in Libby, where the group will discuss recreation, tourism and resources as they pertain to grizzly management. For more information on the council and previous meetings, go to www.fwp.mt.gov/gbac.
Kianna Gardner may be reached at 758-4407 or kgardner@dailyinterlake.com.
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