Agency: No delisting of grizzlies in Glacier area anytime soon

Although a formal effort is under way to delist the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, the Northern Continental Divide grizzly bear population is years from any possibility of delisting, said Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator.

The recovery plan for the larger Northern Continental Divide population will have to be revised to account for new research that is expected to provide a vastly improved assessment of the population's status, Servheen said.

The announcement in November that the service would begin removing the Yellowstone grizzly population from the Endangered Species Act has raised questions about the bears that roam in and around Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

People ask about the potential for delisting that population "all the time," Servheen said.

"There's a lot to be done in the NCDE yet," he said. "We're a long way from recovery. We don't have the kind of funding that's been available for the Yellowstone ecosystem."

A comprehensive study of Yellowstone bears was launched immediately after they were listed as a threatened species in 1975. Since then, that project has become the most intensive bear research effort in the world. It's an effort that has relied on constant aerial monitoring of radio-collared bears, and the park has maintained between 60 and 80 collars a year.

Research on the Northern Continental Divide population has paled in comparison until recently.

A massive population study, based on DNA sampling from bear hair collected over an 8-million-acre area in summer 2004, is expected to provide an unprecedented snapshot population estimate.

"In the NCDE, we have no population data that's credible right now," Servheen said. "We need the point estimate … which is what the DNA project will give us. But that in and of itself is not useful. It has to be combined with a trend study."

A trend study basically will provide statistical information that will show, in time, how the population's birth rate compares to its mortality rate. That comparison will show whether the population is declining, stable or increasing.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is conducting the trend study, which involves radio collaring and monitoring female grizzly bears. Rick Mace, the researcher leading that project, has said that it will take several years to get any reliable trend information about the population.

The population estimate and trend study will render the current recovery plan for the population obsolete, Servheen said.

For years, that plan has been driven by confirmed sightings of female bears with cubs and human-caused mortalities. Relying on sightings of bears with cubs as a measure of population health has proven to be ineffective along the Northern Continental Divide.

"Much of the NCDE is heavily forested so it's hard to see those bears," Servheen said. "The bottom line here is we are going to have to revise the recovery plan for the NCDE, because we know we can't make a credible minimum-population estimate based on sightings of females or cubs."

Even a healthy population estimate and trend numbers won't, by themselves, be enough to begin the formal delisting.

"Numbers alone do not make delisting," Servheen said, explaining that the Endangered Species Act has provisions requiring assessments of threats to the population, threats to habitat and the establishment of "adequate regulatory mechanisms" to ensure the survival of the species.

For the Yellowstone grizzly delisting effort, that all boiled down to a comprehensive "conservation strategy," Servheen said.

"Those documents are very detailed," he said. The conservation strategy prescribes standards for managing habitat, limits on mortality and details on how the bear population will be monitored after delisting.

"We haven't built such a thing for the NCDE yet," Servheen said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.