PROTECT THEM

By Lauren DeWitz/Prowl features editor

Grizzly bears that reside within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem once again are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. This is a good thing for several reason; here are three of them:

Drawing the bears in

There is no denying that people are careless. When you’re camping in the mountains with your family having a good time, you’re not constantly thinking about grizzly bears and how to prevent from getting attacked.  According to studylib.net, grizzly bears can smell food up to 18 miles away. That’s an overwhelming amount of distance for the aroma of your fire-cooked steak to travel throughout the mountains right into the nose of a griz.

Another incident that happens too often involves people hunting other animals.  If you gut your elk in the middle of the mountains, there is an extremely high chance that if a grizzly smells that from 18 miles away they will follow that scent. Grizzly bears do not understand that is your kill. Grizzly bears will eat what they want and they will feed their cubs anything they can.

Besides, you take the risk the minute you decide to go into bear territory. You’re in the wilderness when you get up into those mountains, campsite or not. People need to realize that grizzly bears don’t care or understand where people inhabit.

Perhaps your farm animals are drawing the bears in. Well, there is a less violent solution. According to defenders.org, their organization sells electric fences, “One of the most effective tools to prevent conflict is to install electric fences around items that attract grizzly bears – and Defenders is leading the way with our Electric Fence Incentive Program.”

Preventing trophy hunting

According to leaguer.org.uk, trophy hunting can be described as, “… the stalking and killing of wild animals with guns or bows and arrows with the purpose of obtaining part of the animal as a trophy to represent the success of the hunt.”

This type of hunting is extremely cruel and egotistical. The people who do this are not going to use the animal for food or anything useful, they just want to show off their killing skills. Trophy hunting is one of the leading causes of animal extinction.

And that is exactly what the people who want to hunt the grizzly bears are going to do: trophy hunt.  So many individuals hate the griz. They will kill with that hatred and turn them into bear-skin rugs. They will kill just so they can brag about how they did it.

Involving Native American tribal influence
After the federal judge in Montana ruled to re-establish protection for the grizzly bear in late September, Wyoming Public Media reported that “… Numerous tribes sued the federal government to stop the de-listing and over 200 U.S. and Canadian tribes signed a grizzly bear treaty to protect the species.”

The report went on to say that Blackfeet member Tom Rodgers, who serves as an adviser for the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders, said this effort was “galvanizing.”

“This has brought all of Indian Country together,” said Rodgers as reported on wyomingpublicmedia.org. “It is nice in Indian Country to sometimes prevail and persevere. Because for all too often we have suffered far too many losses. So this was a wonderful, wonderful reprieve.”

He added that as the process continues, Native American representatives should included in the discussion.

“Sit down with us. We can find a solution,” he said to WPM. “If there’s a certain level of overpopulation, we can remove them to reservations as we have the bison. Repopulate our reservations.”

HUNT THEM

By Lauren Lejeune/Prowl guest writer

Picture this: You’re in the mountains and you’ve just shot a nice bull elk. Your adrenaline is pumping and you’re over the moon because you’ve waited all year for this moment. You walk over to where the he fell, examine his horns and think about how great they’re going to look on the wall right above the fireplace.

Pulling out your knives, you get ready to field dress your kill, when suddenly twigs start snapping to your right, sniffing and growls fill the air and your blood runs cold. A grizzly bear emerges and  eyes your elk. You scramble back, not knowing how aggressive this bear is, but knowing full well that you’re not going to take any chances.

He gets right to business, tearing into the hide while you climb back up the hill towards the horses. You’ll have to wait till the next day to see if there’s any salvageable meat, but for now all you can do is head back to camp.

This is the reality for many hunters in Wyoming, as encounters with grizzly bears become increasingly common. According to National Geographic, “There are five times more grizzlies now than there were in 1975, when they were first protected under the Endangered Species Act. The area grizzlies roam has increased by half and conflicts with bears attracted to landowners’ chicken coops now pose a greater threat than hunting.”

The Trump administration announced it would end the Endangered Species Act protecting Yellowstone grizzly bears back in 2017 and the first grizzly hunts were approved for 2018. Twenty-two tags were going to be given out before a federal judge in Montana reinstated legal protections for grizzly bears living in and around Yellowstone National Park and blocked planned hunts in Wyoming and Idaho, where they approved hunting one grizzly.

But now people feel the effects of these bans more often than not. Mr. Wes Livingston of Cody has been guiding for over thirty years in Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, as well as many other places.

“I don’t think it’s a problem,” Livingston said. “They have an overpopulation, and because of the overpopulation of bears which haven’t been hunted since I believe 1975, there’s not enough food in the ecosystem that they live in. So now they’re coming out. Since the judge relisted the bears on the threatened species list there’s been eight bears killed in conflicts with humans.

“ Most people don’t know that. And really the problem is is there’s too many bears for the habitat they have and that’s all it boils down to. It’s just like a big ranch you can only have so many cows on your ranch or you’ll eat yourself out of house and home, and the bears have eaten themselves out of house and home. They’ve got to compete with the wolves and so now they’re very hungry and so they’ve learned to follow the hunters around and eat the gut piles.”

With the grizzly bear population expanding, it can be hard for them to find food.

“They’re trying to bring the grizzly back and it’s been very successful, it’s been so successful to the point that they need to bring the numbers back down for the survival of the species. There’s too many of them, they’re literally killing each other. Big boars will kill cubs and eat them and we find parts of them around the mountains,” Livingston said.

Since the grizzly bear was last hunted in 1975, hunting and the way of life for grizzly bears has changed drastically.

“When I was a kid, I’d be in elk camp and they were still hunting grizzly bears. And we didn’t have any problems with grizzly bears so there was no people getting attacked,” Livingston said. “You didn’t have to go in and run bears off your elk and as we grew up and started guiding we had more bears and so it got to where if you left an elk overnight you brought your dogs, guns and help to make sure you could run a bear off and then it got to a point where we do not leave an elk overnight we bring pack animals with us when we go hunting so that as soon as we kill an elk we pack it up and get out of there so we don’t have those confrontations.”

With grizzly bears having sanctuary from humans for so long, they’ve become familiar with humans being a food source.

“We didn’t use to have to hang food up in the trees because we didn’t have bear problems. The bears had a fear of humans and you know since 1975 they’ve had no fear they’ve had no reason to fear humans so now we have a problem. It changed a lot of things. Bear spray was invented, now everybody carries a pistol or some kind of gun for protection against bears. So yes, it’s changed the whole way we’ve done things. And we’ve tried and done things to try to prevent confrontations but now the population is so high and they are so hungry and they’re competing that they have learned that when there’s humans in the woods there’s going to be food or there’s going to be a gut pile, so now they follow you around.”

“I guarantee you could go out and ride in the snow and make a big circle and come back, more than likely there’s going to be grizzly bears on your tracks just following you waiting for you to shoot an elk. Now they don’t wait for the gut piles, they’re so hungry they’re coming right now. They’re coming at the rifle shots.”

It’s time for people to realize and acknowledge there’s an overpopulation problem and that action needs to be taken.

“For some reason people have these different opinions where it’s okay to hunt elk but not bears and for some reason they’re very in love with these predators. The wolves. They’re very in love with the wild horses and they don’t realize that there has to be some management because people have become so successful in living and building that we don’t have the country for them,” said Livingston. “So the only workable solution is to manage the population of bears. The best thing for the bear population right now is for us to harvest one third of the population. That will bring it back down to where there’s plenty of room for these bears and food and there will be enough for them up in the mountains.”

“Before the hunting season is over you mark my words there will be some people mauled, hopefully there’s nobody else killed- that’s kind of an oddity because grizzly bears usually don’t kill people. They tear them up but they very rarely kill people. It’s not a predacious attack it is a defensive attack.”

The future of the Yellowstone grizzly bear is unknown for now, but one thing is for certain: the population must be better managed for the well-being of the species and the safety of humans.