katqanna
Well-known member
Wilkinson wrote an article For griz, no such thing as a guaranteed lunch, concerning food sources for Grizzly bears.
“The fat levels in bears are the same as they ever were. The bears are adapting … because they are omnivorous.”
— Dr. Chris Servheen, national grizzly bear recovery coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It’s springtime 2014, and grizzly bears are again emerging from their dens in greater Yellowstone.
Not long from now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for managing imperiled plants and animals in America, will declare its intention to remove the Yellowstone-area grizzly population from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Grizzlies in our ecosystem have been classified as a “threatened” species since 1975. Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, citing growing bear numbers, say they should assume primacy over bruin management, which means that, if the pattern with delisted wolves holds, grizzlies will be hunted and treated more disposably.
Two weeks ago as respected ecologist David Mattson delivered a lecture to a packed house in Bozeman. Mont., about the status of four key bear foods, I couldn’t help but think of my ongoing conversation with Mattson that started 20 years ago.
Back in 1994 he presciently raised concerns about a quartet of grizzly staples vital to the health of mother bears and connected to multi-cub litters. These foods have served as engines for bear population growth: high-fat seeds of whitebark pine trees, protein-rich Yellowstone cutthroat trout (that nourished a substantial number of bears around Yellowstone Lake in the heart of the ecosystem), meat (namely elk calves and spring carrion), and army cutworm moths (which hatch in remote alpine talus slopes drawing bears away from people).
As smart as Mattson was (the researcher recently retired from government service), he didn’t foresee how climate change would rapidly hasten the loss of whitebark pine trees, leaving its forest almost functionally extinct. He didn’t see how non-native lake trout in Yellowstone would decimate native Yellowstone cutthroat, leaving few spawning fish for griz to eat.
With climate change also expected to transform moth habitat, Mattson noted in Bozeman that the same reliable natural larder of pivotal foods that fuels rising bear numbers is not going to be present in such abundance in the future.
It raises the question of whether all foods in a grizzly’s omnivorous diet are equal. And will a dramatically altered buffet table, different from the one in the past, still sustain grizzly population health in years and decades to come?
Mattson has doubts. “Nothing out there is replacing the quality of the foods being lost,” he said.
For urging federal and state officials on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee and the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee to exercise caution about delisting, Mattson has been a victim of the “shoot the messenger” syndrome that often meets those who voice dissent.
Mattson alludes to a possible paradox: Could it be that the collapse of significant bear foods will cause more bears to roam to the outer fringes of greater Yellowstone searching for sustenance, making it appear as if the ecosystem is bursting at the seams with grizzlies?
The problem is that states assuming control of management after delisting are likely to treat bears beyond the core-recovery zone as expendable.
More bears that can be killed through hunting and control actions, plus the potential of fewer mother grizzlies giving birth to litters of two and three cubs because of less high-value food being available, could mean the difference between a stable population and a declining one.
All this should be seen against the backdrop of how the states are now managing wolves based on draconian politics and hysteria, not sound science. Further, any premise that a unified vision for managing grizzlies after delisting will succeed is challenged by the dismal track record of federal and state agencies contending with wildlife diseases such as brucellosis and chronic wasting disease. That’s an arena where policy contradictions — again driven by politics, not science — are writ large.
Should Americans have confidence that the states are up to the challenge of caretaking grizzlies?
Next week when the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee meets in Jackson, committee chairman Dan Wenk, the superintendent of Yellowstone, ought to invite Mattson to deliver his presentation.
Let committee members and citizens in this valley soak in what Mattson has to say, based upon decades of insight he’s gleaned into the nuances of grizzly bear foods. It’s information that will give you pause.
“The fat levels in bears are the same as they ever were. The bears are adapting … because they are omnivorous.”
— Dr. Chris Servheen, national grizzly bear recovery coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It’s springtime 2014, and grizzly bears are again emerging from their dens in greater Yellowstone.
Not long from now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for managing imperiled plants and animals in America, will declare its intention to remove the Yellowstone-area grizzly population from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Grizzlies in our ecosystem have been classified as a “threatened” species since 1975. Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, citing growing bear numbers, say they should assume primacy over bruin management, which means that, if the pattern with delisted wolves holds, grizzlies will be hunted and treated more disposably.
Two weeks ago as respected ecologist David Mattson delivered a lecture to a packed house in Bozeman. Mont., about the status of four key bear foods, I couldn’t help but think of my ongoing conversation with Mattson that started 20 years ago.
Back in 1994 he presciently raised concerns about a quartet of grizzly staples vital to the health of mother bears and connected to multi-cub litters. These foods have served as engines for bear population growth: high-fat seeds of whitebark pine trees, protein-rich Yellowstone cutthroat trout (that nourished a substantial number of bears around Yellowstone Lake in the heart of the ecosystem), meat (namely elk calves and spring carrion), and army cutworm moths (which hatch in remote alpine talus slopes drawing bears away from people).
As smart as Mattson was (the researcher recently retired from government service), he didn’t foresee how climate change would rapidly hasten the loss of whitebark pine trees, leaving its forest almost functionally extinct. He didn’t see how non-native lake trout in Yellowstone would decimate native Yellowstone cutthroat, leaving few spawning fish for griz to eat.
With climate change also expected to transform moth habitat, Mattson noted in Bozeman that the same reliable natural larder of pivotal foods that fuels rising bear numbers is not going to be present in such abundance in the future.
It raises the question of whether all foods in a grizzly’s omnivorous diet are equal. And will a dramatically altered buffet table, different from the one in the past, still sustain grizzly population health in years and decades to come?
Mattson has doubts. “Nothing out there is replacing the quality of the foods being lost,” he said.
For urging federal and state officials on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee and the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee to exercise caution about delisting, Mattson has been a victim of the “shoot the messenger” syndrome that often meets those who voice dissent.
Mattson alludes to a possible paradox: Could it be that the collapse of significant bear foods will cause more bears to roam to the outer fringes of greater Yellowstone searching for sustenance, making it appear as if the ecosystem is bursting at the seams with grizzlies?
The problem is that states assuming control of management after delisting are likely to treat bears beyond the core-recovery zone as expendable.
More bears that can be killed through hunting and control actions, plus the potential of fewer mother grizzlies giving birth to litters of two and three cubs because of less high-value food being available, could mean the difference between a stable population and a declining one.
All this should be seen against the backdrop of how the states are now managing wolves based on draconian politics and hysteria, not sound science. Further, any premise that a unified vision for managing grizzlies after delisting will succeed is challenged by the dismal track record of federal and state agencies contending with wildlife diseases such as brucellosis and chronic wasting disease. That’s an arena where policy contradictions — again driven by politics, not science — are writ large.
Should Americans have confidence that the states are up to the challenge of caretaking grizzlies?
Next week when the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee meets in Jackson, committee chairman Dan Wenk, the superintendent of Yellowstone, ought to invite Mattson to deliver his presentation.
Let committee members and citizens in this valley soak in what Mattson has to say, based upon decades of insight he’s gleaned into the nuances of grizzly bear foods. It’s information that will give you pause.
