Update: I’ve put the story online as a pdf here.
In this month’s “Environmental Affairs” column at Men’s Journal, I took a crack at deciphering the debate over the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, and whether it should come off of the Endangered Species List. The decision — which looks most likely to be a done deal in favor of taking it off — has some environmentalists up in arms. Surprisingly, though, other conservationists back “delisting.” Have the bears “recovered” enough to declare a kind of victory? Or are the threats to their survival still grave enough warrant keeping them on the list?
The story isn’t online, so you’ll have to pick up a copy if you’re interested. Here are the first couple paragraphs:
On a breezy afternoon in Montana’s Madison Valley, 45 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, Steve Primm and I pick our way along a ridge, scanning the horizon for wildlife. Hiking through the remote foothills of the 20,000-acre Sun Ranch, we pass sets of scattered cattle bones and stop to watch elk herds graze against the dazzling mountain backdrop. In grizzly country, though, there’s no such thing as a leisurely hike, and Primm keeps his pepper spray close at hand. “Having a top carnivore out here that is potentially dangerous really focuses your attention,” he says cheerfully. Primm, a program manager for the non-profit Predator Conservation Alliance, which helps the ranch reduce livestock-predator conflicts, says that a few decades ago our chances of seeing a grizzly here would have been practically nil. Each of the last two years, however, a female and her cubs have wandered through Sun Ranch — ambassadors of a Yellowstone grizzly population that has rebounded from the brink of extinction.
Rebounded, but by how much? That’s the question echoing around Yellowstone since the U.S. Interior Department announced plans last fall to remove the area’s grizzly bear population from the Endangered Species List. Once “delisted” (the final decision could come as soon as this month), the grizzlies would be protected instead under the Final Conservation Strategy, an 86-page document that establishes a primary conservation area around the park and hands over much of the responsibility of bear management to the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. …
For anyone going in with a fairly open mind, which I think I did, how you feel about the question can end up depending on which side you’ve talked to more recently. Essentially, whether the Yellowstone grizzly comes off the list comes down to predictions about the future, predictions colored by various interpretations of the science at hand. Since the two sides disagree on such basic scientific questions as the number of bears, the stability of their food supplies, and the threats to their genetic makeup, there is a lot of room for those interpretations to be filtered through political viewpoints. Everybody says “science should decide,” but then the question becomes: “whose science?”
Personally, I generally tend to back a precautionary principle approach to these kinds of questions — especially now, given the current federal government’s record on a variety of environmental (or more generally, scientific) issues. But in this case, it seems like there is is significant science behind a decision to take them off the list, making it an incredibly tough call. Fortunately, the groups opposing the delisting (and probably suing over it), together with those favoring it, will all be around to keep the pressure on the state and federal agencies that will manage the grizzly’s future after it comes off.
Posted at 6:15 pm | Filed under Environment/Energy, Men's Journal, Recent stories |
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