Bear money falls short
Agencies look for ways to keep grizzly bear studies going
By JIM MANN/Daily Inter Lake
There's enough money to get through this year, but there is a severe long-term funding shortfall for ongoing grizzly bear trend monitoring in the Northern Rockies, according to a group of state and federal land and wildlife managers who met in Kalispell Thursday.
The monitoring work has been led by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, but last year, the department announced that it could no longer shoulder the cost of the program.
It has enough funding this year only because the Flathead National Forest had extra money to subsidize it.
"What we're trying to do is establish the funding necessary for an annual monitoring program," said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"Currently, we just have a real hand-to-mouth program. We have volunteer time and services from the agencies. We're just not fully doing what we need to do."
Servheen and officials with the U.S. Forest Service, Glacier National Park and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks recently crunched numbers to determine what it would cost to have a monitoring program akin to the federally funded program in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
They presented their findings to members of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear subcommittee.
The estimated cost of an adequate monitoring program came to just more than $586,000 annually. This year, there is about $95,000 for the work, plus donated field work and staff time from the various agencies in charge of managing grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.
Glacier Park rangers, for instance, will do some of the trapping work necessary to maintain radio or satellite collars on 25 to 30 female grizzly bears throughout the ecosystem. The main purpose is to monitor reproduction and mortality of bears to determine over time whether the population is shrinking or growing.
The monitoring work goes hand-in-glove with a DNA-driven study carried out in 2004 to provide a snapshot population estimate.
"It helps us to understand the sustainable mortality levels within the system," Servheen said, referring to monitoring work that provides a wealth of other information about bear movements and habitat use.
The difficulty with the monitoring program is that it must continue annually for at least a decade to provide statistically valid information on population trends.
"It's not something where you can collect data for a few years and then stop for awhile," Servheen said.
"It was fortunate that we got money through the Forest Service for this year," he added. "But we can't run a railroad this way. It's just not possible to do it in the long run."
The work will carry on this year in Glacier Park, Servheen said, but there won't be similar work on the neighboring Blackfeet Reservation because of tribal budget constraints.
"In the long term, we need this trend monitoring so we can judge the effectiveness of our management efforts," said Servheen, who also briefed the subcommittee on human-caused grizzly bear mortality statistics for 2007.
The count came to 25 bears, and most notably, seven bears were killed in automobile collisions and five were hit by trains.
"That's a new record," Servheen said. "Mortalities from automobiles and trains accounted for half the mortalities."
The average annual mortality count has been 20 for the last 10 years, Servheen said.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com