Fish and Wildlife Commission sued over open-meeting law, black bear quotas

The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission was sued Friday for allegedly ignoring state open meeting laws when it approved eliminating some black bear hunting quotas in December.

The seven-member commission unanimously agreed at its Dec. 19 meeting to drop a rule that closed black bear hunting in certain hunting districts of northwest Montana if hunters killed more than 37% of the estimated female bear population there. 

The lawsuit, filed by wildlife and conservation group members from across the state, claims the commissioners failed to publish the proposal before the meeting and then took action on it without proper notice or public comment.

“I personally care a lot about black bears,” said Denise Boggs, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit and a former Fish, Wildlife & Parks wildlife division employee. “But we are litigating this because the public process and open meeting laws were violated.”

During a discussion of “corrections and amendments to black bear, antelope, deer, bighorn sheep and boundary descriptions/clarifications” listed on the agenda during the December meeting, Region 2 Commissioner Jeff Burrows of Hamilton proposed the black bear rule change. It had not been included in the published agenda before the meeting, according to the lawsuit.

In the online recording of the meeting, Commission Chair Lesley Robinson said Burrow’s proposal was “one the public has not seen, which is perfectly fine. This is completely fine for the amendments to come at the meeting.”

Requests for comment to Robinson and Montana FWP spokesman Greg Lemon were not returned by Friday afternoon.

The change affected FWP Region 1 efforts to sustain black bear populations in northwest Montana. Region 1 Wildlife Manager Neil Anderson told the commissioners in December that hunters were particularly successful in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, killing about 1,500 black bears combined. But through 2023 and 2024, they only took about 900.

Region 1 Commissioner Pat Tabor of Whitefish said hunters were telling him that deer and elk populations were down in northwest Montana and they believed black bears were partly responsible.

“A slight decline in black bears is in order until we get stabilization in ungulates,” Tabor said during the December meeting. “I got a tremendous amount of traffic on this. We need to be more aggressive in predator management in Region 1.”

Region 3 Commissioner Susan Kirby Brooke of Bozeman added she thought over-large populations of black bears were the reason more residents in Kalispell and Columbia Falls were having bear conflicts at their homes.

“If the population is stable, they wouldn’t be coming into neighborhoods,” she said. However, FWP staff said those two things were not related.

“The challenges we have managing altercations with bears is largely independent of population size and hunting,” FWP game management Bureau Chief Brian Wakeling told the commissioners. “Hunting is not the primary method we use to address human conflict that arises from bear interactions or altercations.”

Anderson added that bear-human conflicts in neighborhoods had more to do with food supplies. In dry years when huckleberry crops are small, bears seek out human foods like unsecured garbage, bird feeders and dog food.

“It’s a little more complicated than just black bear numbers,” Anderson told the commissioners. “All the [residential] development is occurring in the valleys and riparian areas [that bears used to frequent]. People want to live there.”

Region 1 wildlife managers suggested the 37% female kill quota in January 2024. The move came in response to the recent extension of black bear hunting seasons, along with new opportunities to chase black bears with hounds. That likely meant more females getting killed, which raised the potential for a population downturn.

“We wanted to use this method for a couple years, and then come back to next year’s biennial season-setting with hard quotas, rather than this 37%,” Wakeling told the commissioners.

But Tabor, who recently retired from an hunter outfitting and guide company in northwest Montana, said he thought the 37% female kill quota was “uber-conservative,” and asked if a limit of 40% or 45% was possible.

Anderson replied that killing 40% of the females in a bear management unit was the expected threshold where populations could start crashing. The 37% point was chosen to avoid reaching that tipping point.

Mike Bader, a Missoula-based wildlife consultant and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the divergences between what the commissioners proposed and what their FWP staff research showed was part of the reason why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to delist grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act last week. Federally protected grizzlies are often killed in encounters with black-bear hunters, and the FWS decision cited inadequate state regulatory controls on those hunters as a serious risk to grizzly survival.

“They just don’t seem ready to manage the species,” Bader said Friday. “They can’t just say ‘we’ll make adjustments and fix it next year.’”

A group of 40 wildlife experts made a similar point in a letter to the Fish and Wildlife Commission after the December meeting.

“This is management based on the whimsy of commissioners rather than on data, analysis and consultation with biologists on the ground,” the letter stated. “A particular irony in this case is that FWP recently initiated research to update our understanding of both black bear abundance and elk population dynamics in northwestern Montana. Rather than awaiting the results from FWP staff tasked with providing objective information, the commission moved forward based on some anecdotes they heard and their obvious personal bias against predators.”

During a public comment session later in the meeting, several speakers supported removal of the black bear quota. Two hunting outfitters noted it was difficult for hunters in the backcountry to know if their district black bear season had been closed early because the quota had been reached. They also said it was hard to book late-season hunting clients not knowing if the district might be closed before the regular season ended.

Mike Mershon, of the Montana Wildlife Federation, praised a different rule change involving bighorn sheep, but then added a warning about the commission’s process.

“These agenda amendments make it difficult to get it out to the public,” Mershon said, “so they can respond to developing amendments.”