Area grizzly population continues to grow

State and federal wildlife officials believe the largest population of grizzlies in the lower 48 states is continuing to make strides as they move toward a possible delisting of the great bear in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

Representatives from Glacier National Park, five national forests, Indian tribes and other state and federal agencies gathered at Lone Pine State Park on Wednesday to deliver updates on the recovery of the species, listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

Nearly 1,000 grizzly bears are believed to exist in the recovery zone, which occupies more than 6 million acres centered around Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Cecily Costello, a research wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, recently began continuing the population monitoring work of longtime state grizzly expert Rick Mace, who retired earlier this year.

Presenting preliminary findings of the long-range study, she estimated the population at around 960 bears, and said it has continued to increase by an average of 2.3 percent annually throughout the last decade.

Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, called the study “legally and biologically defensible,” and noted that it tracks with previous studies estimating that the population has grown threefold and doubled its range in the past 40 years.

“The bear population is showing all the signs that it’s recovered,’ he said at the end of the meeting. “That’s very comforting. In 35 years of efforts, we’ve come a long way with this population.”

That study will help to inform the multi-agency grizzly bear conservation strategy, which he expects to finalize by the end of the year.

Servheen declined to estimate how soon a proposed rule to delist the species could come, but said it would require all the regulatory mechanisms to be in place first. That includes conducting individual analyses of all potential threats, which he characterized as a lengthy process which will result in “hundreds of pages” of documentation.

With the final management plan likely to include some degree of grizzly hunting, Costello’s work could also help guide grizzly bear hunting limits, which still are a matter of contention between state and federal wildlife managers.

Costello selected 2013 as a representative year for bear mortalities and other population indicators including survival rates, reproduction rates and average cubs per litter.

“For the time period we were studying the bears, we have estimated approximately 31 total mortalities, and we estimated we could have around 46 without a population decline,” she said.

That means the population is expected to remain stable if an additional 15 bears were removed from the population in a given year. But, she noted, that number could go up or down depending on the wide range of factor affecting bears year to year.

And just estimating the mortalities is tricky. Bears hit by cars and trains, shot accidentally by black bear hunters or killed in self-defense tend to be reported to agencies at a high rate, while the true number of bears that are poached or die of natural causes is far more difficult to pin down.

Lori Roberts, a resource assistant with the state wildlife agency, said 22 grizzly deaths were reported in 2015, compared with the annual average of 24.

Of those, 14 deaths were human-caused. Six bears were struck and killed by vehicles and four were poached, while agency capture, mistaken identity and self-defense were responsible for one grizzly death each. Another suspected human-caused death is under investigation.

Agency removals accounted for eight grizzly mortalities, including four bears that were preying on livestock. One grizzly was responsible for extensive property damage.

Wildlife agencies also captured a total of 43 separate bears this year, two of which were captured twice.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.