America Saved the Grizzlies, and Now the Bears are Invading Towns

As discussed below, grizzly bears are increasingly a danger to people, property, and livestock.

At Pitchstone Waters Ranch, grizzly bears have made cattle ranching virtually impossible, thus hampering our efforts to reduce fine fuels in forests, a key to wildfire protection.  This harms habitat and wildlife including bears. 

No financial compensation is available for this damage – until a domestic animal is actually killed. Thus, bear damage to infrastructure including fences and water points, is ignored.

Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho continue their round-robin ‘removal’ programs wherein each captures then releases problem bears on the others.

It is just common sense to delist a species that is no longer endangered, thereby allowing limited hunting to make bears wary, and to fully compensate for bear damages to ranching economics. This kills fewer bears than agencies destroying problem animals and/or the “SSS” solution (’shoot, shovel, and shut up’ ) that desperate landowners feel is forced on them.

NOTE: this article was originally published to WSJ.com on August 10, 2024. It was written by Jim Carlton. Photographs and Video by Angela Owens.

CODY, Wyo.— Since the grizzlies arrived, harvesting sweet corn has become an unwelcome adrenaline rush for Cecil and Bridget Gallagher.

The huge omnivores began showing up on their ranch near here about a decade ago, forcing them to put up an electric fence to protect a popular fall corn maze. But the grizzly bears have continued coming into the surrounding cornfields; four were trapped by state game managers last year.

Now, as harvest season looms, the Gallaghers fear for themselves and their children, who will have to walk among 8-foot high cornstalks—often separated as they pick, and trying to generate enough noise to ward off bears.

“I do a lot of praying,” said Bridget Gallagher, 45 years old.

An apex predator that can top 500 pounds and outrun a horse, grizzlies have made a roaring comeback since they were put on the Endangered Species List in 1975, when as few as 700 prowled the Lower 48 states.

Biologists estimate the grizzly population has risen to at least 2,000, and the bears are now roaming far beyond their Glacier and Yellowstone National Park strongholds and into towns, farms and ranches across the Northern Rockies, where they hadn’t been seen in over a century.

The resurgence is leading to conflicts between the bears and another apex species that had grown accustomed to life with few grizzlies—humans. 

 ‘Icon’ of the West

Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are now pushing for the grizzly to be taken off the protected list and their numbers managed with hunting.

“They need to be scared of us,” said Samantha Justice, 22, who was booking rafting trips on a river where grizzlies have charged two boats recently, and who carries her rifle when she goes in the woods. Like many here, Justice wants the bears open to hunting.

Grizzly advocates are fighting to maintain protections, arguing today’s population pales in comparison to the estimated 50,000 bears that roamed the Western U.S. in the mid-1800s.

“We are talking about an icon of our Western heritage and the last of the last,” said David Mattson, a retired federal wildlife researcher.

He and other bear supporters say people and grizzlies can coexist with precautions taken, such as bear-proofing food storage and making noise while hiking.

Even with the bears’ comeback, human fatalities are still relatively rare. Since 1992, there have been at least 165 recorded injuries to humans, including 10 deaths—a low number considering the region’s burgeoning population and millions of tourists, said Frank van Manen, supervisory research wildlife biologist for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, a science consortium formed by the Department of the Interior that monitors the bear population. Grizzlies typically go out of their way to avoid people, he said.

With bear-proof garbage bins, widely used bear spray and other measures, Yellowstone averages one grizzly attack a year—its lowest on record per capita, said Kerry Gunther, the park’s bear-management biologist.

Rising conflicts

Yet, around Yellowstone, conflicts have risen from about 50 annually in the early 1990s to more than 400 in recent years, according to the interagency team. Grizzlies are burglarizing buildings, tangling with people and taking down cows, sheep and chickens—along with pet dogs. The bears’ range has tripled to 27,000 square miles since 1990, the team estimates.

The biggest increases in conflicts are in areas newly reclaimed by the bears that are now teeming with humans, said van Manen. Some grizzlies have learned it can be easier to prey on cattle or steal trash than forage in the woods. “They’re incredibly intelligent and resourceful animals,” he said.

In 2017, rebounding grizzly numbers prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove them from the Endangered Species List, handing control to surrounding states. Wyoming and Idaho greenlighted hunts. But before any could occur, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 agreed with a lawsuit filed by environmental and tribal groups that the bears should remain under federal protection. 

Since then, Montana and Wyoming have filed petitions to once again “delist” the grizzly, while Idaho is suing, challenging the protections. State officials say grizzly conflicts are more costly and time-consuming with the bears still classified. Wyoming spends about $2 million a year, including about $500,000 for losses such as livestock.

Fish and Wildlife officials say they are reviewing the listing status for all Lower 48 grizzlies—not just for Yellowstone— with a decision expected by late January.

Bears act up more outside park borders where fewer safeguards exist. In Gardiner, Mont., at Yellowstone’s north entrance, one or more grizzlies this summer ransacked dumpsters, restaurants and cars—with one brazen bear caught on camera.

Dana Darlington runs a ranch on the Montana prairie where grizzlies hadn’t been seen in at least a century. But one cold morning last April, he and his wife found remnants of a 120-pound calf that state biologists later confirmed had been attacked by one of the bears.

“I never thought I’d see a grizzly kill out here in my life,” said Darlington, 60. “I’m just bewildered what is going on out here.”

For Wyoming large-carnivore biologist Luke Ellsbury, the “holy crap” moment came last spring when a grizzly turned up in the Bighorn mountains 150 miles east of Yellowstone. That meant the animal had crossed much of the sprawling Big Horn Basin with its far-flung ranches, farms and highways. “We thought it would be a few more years,” said Ellsbury, whose Game and Fish Department had to euthanize the animal because it killed livestock.

At his riverfront home in Wapiti, Wyo., Elliott Lee awoke early one day to frantic squawks coming from his backyard chicken coop. “The fence had been smashed down and I looked up and a grizzly bear was 25 to 30 feet away,” said Lee, 78. “He had killed four chickens and was in the process of eating them.”

‘Robobear’ practice

The Bighorn Basin, once the Old West playground of “Buffalo Bill” Cody, is now a hotbed of grizzly activity. The bears have even rattled Cody, a feisty town of 10,000 that has touted the tourism slogan: “Our town’s founder could beat up your town’s founder.”

Electric fences have gone up at the municipal landfill and at apple orchards. State officials plan to encircle all of the Gallaghers’ cornfields with one soon. That can’t happen soon enough for Bridget Gallagher. “We start picking sweet corn next week,” she texted Friday. “Saw our First set of bear tracks around the sweetcorn field a couple days ago.” She added, “Luck’s job begins again.” 

Last year, in a rarity, a grizzly was confirmed within Cody, along the Shoshone River below a busy nature trail. Ellsbury scared it off by firing blanks.

His office equips locals with bear spray, and lets people practice on a Robobear, a remote-controlled charging grizzly.

At nearby Two Dot Ranch, manager Mark McCarty reports losing 50 to 75 calves yearly to grizzlies and other predators—or 2% of his newborns. The state compensates the ranch, but that doesn’t cover all costs, he said, adding that stressed-out heifers breed less.

“I don’t want to see the bears eliminated, but they’ve gotten to be so many they tend to get in trouble,” McCarty said, taking a break from branding bawling calves. “It’s like a glass of water and the bears are pouring over the top.”

One recent day, motorists in Yellowstone stopped to admire a grizzly sunbathing in a clearing. Becky Benson, watching through a camera, said no way should they be removed from protected status. “I just think we need to coexist,” said Benson, of Mandan, N.D., as a nearby visitor from Idaho nodded in agreement.

Comments

Have something to add? Contribute using the Comments feature below...