Governor's grizzly council makes tracks to Libby City Hall this month

Robyn King hopes the visit to Libby later this month by the Governor’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council will raise awareness of challenges facing the species in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem.

King, executive director of the Yaak Valley Forest Council, serves on the governor’s council.

One of those challenges is protecting or enhancing connectivity between small populations of grizzlies in the Yaak and the Cabinet Mountains and larger populations of the threatened species in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

The advisory council will meet at City Hall in Libby on Feb. 26 and 27. Its meetings are public. One topic will focus on connectivity and the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem. Another will examine the challenges and opportunities associated with tourism and recreation and their impacts on grizzly recovery, conservation and management.

“It’s great that the council will be visiting the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem and can hear firsthand what our challenges are for recovery and opportunities as well,” King said.

“I’m happy to see a panel about connectivity as the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem has different challenges concerning connectivity than the other subpopulations and recovery zones,” she said. “And we’re looking forward to a productive conversation about the impacts and challenges that recreation and tourism will have on our recovery efforts.”

King is optimistic the discussions will yield “some positive and proactive recommendations to address these issues.”

As for recreation challenges, the Yaak Valley Forest Council and other groups have expressed concern about the current route of the 1,200-mile Pacific Northwest Trail, which travels through core grizzly habitat in the Yaak. For now, the still mostly unmarked trail corridor sees little use, but that could change, say opponents of the route.

They favor an alternative, known as the Southern Route, proposed years ago by the late bear biologist Charles Jonkel.

The Cabinet-Yaak Recovery Zone for grizzly bears is located in northwestern Montana and northeastern Idaho. The recovery zone stretches over more than 2,600 square miles of forested and mountainous habitat throughout the Yaak River drainage and the Cabinet Mountains. Public lands make up about 90 percent of the ecosystem.

The recovery zone’s grizzly population extends into Canada through the Purcell Mountain Range.

In the 1980s, only a few grizzly bears remained in this area, estimated at fewer than 10 in the Cabinet Mountains portion alone. In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a program, in collaboration with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, to restore the population and boost genetic diversity for the bears.

The agencies initiated an “augmentation program” intended to increase both the population of grizzlies and their genetic diversity.

Young grizzly bears without a history of conflict have been occasionally captured in the nearby Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem Recovery Zone and moved to remote areas with similar habitat conditions in the Cabinet-Yaak, with the goal of the bears taking up residency.

In 2018, the 20th grizzly bear was moved to the ecosystem through this augmentation program. In 2019, two grizzly bears, a sub-adult female and sub-adult male, were captured in the Whitefish Range and moved to the Cabinet-Yaak.

Currently, there are an estimated 55 to 60 grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak Recovery Zone, according to Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The meeting in Libby will be the Grizzly Bear Advisory Council’s fifth such gathering. Past meetings have been held in East Helena, Bozeman, Missoula and Polson.

Gov. Steve Bullock created the council last year in response to grizzly bear populations increasing in some parts of their range. The bruins’ expanded territory has yielded management challenges and a higher incidence of conflicts with people in some locations, a situation exacerbated by subdivisions and other development in grizzly habitat.

The council includes 18 volunteers who have varied backgrounds, ranging from cattle ranchers to conservationists, from dude ranchers to scientists.

The council’s objectives include:

- Maintaining and enhancing human safety

- Ensuring a healthy, sustainable grizzly population

- Improving responses to conflicts involving grizzlies

- Engaging partners in grizzly-related outreach and conflict prevention

- Improving intergovernmental, interagency and tribal coordination.

Additional meetings of the Grizzly Bear Advisory Council will be held across the state to provide more people an opportunity to interact with the group before the council submits final recommendations this summer.

More information about the council, including meeting summaries and presentation slides from previous meetings, can be found at fwp.mt.gov/gbac.

The Governor’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council will meet in Libby on Feb. 26 and 27 in the Ponderosa Room at City Hall. The Feb. 26 meeting will begin at 8 a.m. and the Feb. 27 meeting at 9 a.m. In addition, the council will offer the public an opportunity for comment and questions on Feb. 26 from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.