Federal money OK'd to finish DNA study

An appropriations bill approved by Congress includes $988,000 that would pay for completion of a grizzly bear population study in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, the study's leader said Wednesday.

"That would be enough," U.S. Geological Survey research Kate Kendall said.

The funding would pay to complete genetic analysis of 33,000 hair samples collected last summer across an 8-million-acre study area that included the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Glacier National Park and surrounding lands.

The epic amount of field work involved with the study accounted for the bulk of the cost.

All of the hair samples collected from rub trees and scent-baited sites surrounded by barbed wire are being analyzed at a genetics laboratory in British Columbia.

The analysis will identify individual grizzly bears, and through a "mark-recapture" statistical analysis, Kendall will produce an unprecedented population estimate.

The genetic analysis will continue through 2005 and the study's final report is not expected until December 2006.

In the meantime, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is taking the lead on a complementary study that will measure population trends to go along with the population estimate.

Headed by state research biologist Rick Mace, that effort will involve capturing and fitting at least 25 female grizzly bears with radio collars and monitoring those bears.

Eighteen females were fitted with collars this summer, but most of those animals were on the fringes of the study area. Next year, there will be an effort to collar bears in the ecosystem's interior.

Mace said it will be an "ongoing monitoring project" that will carry on for several years before the collared bears produce reliable information on birth rates and death rates.