Grizzly research deserves funding

It's a shame that grizzly bear research in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem has repeatedly relied on slap-dash, last-minute, patchwork funding. It's a pursuit that deserves more attention and support than it has gotten over time.

Most recently, an ongoing population trend study was in jeopardy because Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks was incredibly the only agency backing the work, even though recovery of the grizzly population is a national interest.

Understandably, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials announced earlier this year that the agency could no longer afford to shoulder the population trend study on its own. So where was the federal help?

Nowhere, really. Not until Flathead National Forest Supervisor Cathy Barbouletos made a commendable effort in just the last few weeks, cobbling together year-end carryover funds from several national forests and the regional office in Missoula. She came up with $377,000 that will ensure the study can carry on, in shoestring fashion, for the next few years.

This should be a much higher priority for the federal government, because it isn't really optional research. Led by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks research biologist Rick Mace, the trend study is effectively Part Two of an unprecedented study that will produce a regional grizzly bear population estimate, derived from genetic analysis of thousands of bear hair samples that were collected in the summer of 2004.

That "snapshot" research, which was also pursued on a hastily assembled shoe-string budget, would be merely interesting if it were not for Mace's follow-up research, aimed at determining if the bear population has been increasing or decreasing since the summer of 2004. The population estimate and the population trend are considered vital prerequisites in determining whether efforts to recover the bear population are working or not. Both ingredients are entirely necessary for any future proposal to remove grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

And of course, the research is also a worthy pursuit for straightforward scientific reasons as well.

So why has it been treated like an optional pursuit, only worthy of left-over federal budget scraps? Universities commonly get research grants well in excess of $377,000. Why, that much money wouldn't buy 200 yards of federal highway construction.

Worse, Northern Divide grizzly bears seem to be treated like ugly stepchildren compared to their brethren in the Yellowstone ecosystem, where population research has for years relied on radio collars and constant, expensive monitoring from aircraft. The current annual budget for Yellowstone grizzly monitoring amounts to $775,000. That's right - more than twice the total, five-year federal funding dedicated to the Northern Divide grizzly population monitoring.

It just isn't right. Montanans and others who support recovery of the grizzly population in our region should make more noise. Montana's largest population of grizzly bears deserves better.