Delisting grizzlies

[ELKCHSR]

U.S. to propose taking grizzlies off endangered list

BILLINGS, Montana (AP) -- Grizzly bears in areas surrounding Yellowstone National Park would be removed from the endangered species list under a proposal to be announced next week, officials said Thursday.

The Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on the proposal, but a congressional official and a state government official who were each informed of the announcement confirmed the government's plan. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal has not yet been made public.

Mike Volesky, a policy adviser to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said an announcement on grizzly bears was planned, but he did not have details.

Federal wildlife officials estimate that more than 600 grizzly bears live in the region surrounding Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Those numbers represent a significant recovery. Only 200 or 250 grizzlies were in that region in 1975, when grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

If the grizzlies are removed from the list, the three states would assume management responsibilities from federal wildlife officials and have greater flexibility in dealing with bears. Stripping the bears of protection could eventually clear the way for hunting of grizzlies in that region.

If adopted, the proposal would apply only to bears outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Bears within the parks would remain federally protected.

Once the proposal is announced, there would be a period of public comment, and it could be months before a final decision is made. A possible court battle could also delay efforts to remove federal protections.

Tom France, regional director for the National Wildlife Federation, said his organization believes removing bears from federal protection in the Yellowstone area is long overdue.

Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said he also supported taking bears off the list.

The bear population dwindled in the West early in the last century in large part because of hunting and destruction of the animals' habitat. Some environmentalists say the bears still do not have adequate protections to ensure their long-term success.

"The agencies are in a state of denial about what's happening on the landscape," said Louisa Willcox, of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Grizzly habitat is being threatened by development, and the bears' food sources also are at risk, she said.

 

[Elkhunter]

A grizz hunt would sure be nice. Although, I ain't seen one of them in the yard yet.

 

[ELKCHSR]

LOL Bill...

Give it time, you may soon get your wish...

 

[BuzzH]

What???

Grizzly delisting?

Theres a whole herd of nitwit hunttalkers who said, "that will never happen." They sounded pretty convincing at the time...even if they were full of crap.

I told you so...again.

 

[danr55]

Bill, You've seen everything else in your yard. Buffalo, elk, Moose, Deer, Black Bear, Eland, Gnu, .. wait a minute.. Those last two weren't you, were they?

Give it time. It will happen.

 

[Ithaca 37]

I can't believe it! Imagine being at the point where we'd actually consider delisting grizzlies! What's next, wolves? I thought these delistings where supposed to be impossible. Where's BHR when we need his comments? He said this could never happen. Is he wrong again?

Hey Buzz, You gonna apply for a grizz tag with me? We could be the first guys to get a couple of them.

PS I'll be in Orofino tomorrow.

 

[MarvB]

K-ripes...hope no one pulls a muscle while patting themselves on the back

 

[ELKCHSR]

It still has to be seen how long it takes, I don't think the anti's are going to let this go unsaid or unpunished...

 

[Elkhunter]

For the best of hunters and enviromentalists, I would rater this wait until after the next election based on the track record of the public lands being developed latetly. Here is a quote that I tend to agree with. Willcox said bear habitat is being chipped away by development, oil and gas drilling, logging and road building. She feared that delisting grizzlies would loosen restrictions on those activities, reducing habitat further and increasing the likelihood of bear-human conflicts.

 

[Ithaca 37]

Yellowstone bears to lose protected status
Move could clear the way for hunting

Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Posted: 7:05 p.m. EST (00:05 GMT)


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hunters eventually could be allowed to kill grizzly bears in three states if the government is successful in removing federal protections.

Grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park had dwindled to 220 to 320 animals in 1975, when they were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. In the past 30 years, the Interior Department says, the number of bears in that region has grown at a rate of 4 percent to 7 percent a year, and they now number about 600.

Because of this rate of recovery, the department on Tuesday proposed taking the grizzlies off the list.

Removing federal protection would allow Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to assume management responsibilities from the federal government for grizzlies around Yellowstone, and state plans leave open the possibility of limited grizzly bear hunting. Bears within Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park would remain off limits to hunting, however.

Environmental groups are split over the issue. The National Wildlife Federation supports ending the protections, saying it would highlight the success of the endangered species law. But the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and other groups contend the grizzly should remain on the list because too many threats to the animal still exist. They include oil and gas drilling, logging and the growing number of housing developments.

Republican lawmakers say the success of recovering the bears is a rarity under an endangered species law that is ineffective and burdensome to landowners. Fewer than 20 species have been recovered since President Nixon signed the law in 1973.

Many in Congress have called the law a failure, and the House passed a bill in September to lessen the government's role in managing species.

"The fact that we are rolling this out with such fanfare underscores what a rarity recovering a species is," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. "It is a testament to the partnerships created in this case, but also a cry for reform of the ESA."

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Tuesday that grizzly bear recovery has been a success because of cooperation between state and federal governments, along with biologists and conservation groups. She added, though, that the Bush Administration would like to see the law focused more on recovery efforts than on penalizing landowners who find endangered species on their land.

Four other grizzly populations in the lower 48 states will continue to be protected as threatened species under the act. These bears live in the Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington. Alaskan grizzly bears, which number about 30,000, were never listed.

Norton said Yellowstone grizzlies could be removed from the list as early as 2006, but acknowledged that litigation could delay the move.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/11/15/grizzly.protection.ap/index.html

 

[Ithaca 37]

Idaho could eventually reopen grizzly bear hunting in Eastern Idaho if grizzly bears are removed from the threatened species list. The great bear, whose numbers have tripled in 30 years, would be classed as a big game animal.

But there is "no immediate plan to hunt grizzlies in Idaho," said Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Steve Huffaker. "This is a small population."

Interior Secretary Gale Norton proposed Tuesday removing federal protection from Yellowstone's grizzly bears, declaring the increase in population a success for cooperative management under the Endangered Species Act.

"These bears are now no longer endangered," Norton said in a news conference.

The public has 90 days to comment on the decision that could return management of the bears around Yellowstone National Park to the states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana after 30 years. The decision could be made in 2006.

Grizzly bear numbers have risen from about 200 in the early 1980s to more than 600 bears today, growing at a 4 to 7 percent annual rate. They are spread across more than 9 million acres of habitat — an area the size of Connecticut — scattered across hundreds of miles of mountains, forests and rangeland in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Federal and state land and game managers restored the grizzly population by dramatically reducing human caused mortalities like poaching, increasing habitat by closing roads and phasing out sheep grazing in grizzly country. Sheep are incompatable in grizzly country because grizzlies won't stop killing sheep.

Many of the rules protecting bears will remain in effect on public lands within what is called the "Primary Conservation Area." Outside of this area — where many of Idaho's bears were tracked by federal biologists this fall — Idaho's Department of Fish and Game would be able to decide when to kill a marauding bear.

In this "Distinct Population Segment Boundary," bears now strictly protected by the federal government would have reduced protection. Outside this boundary, though, bears remain protected under the Endangered Species Act under the rule.

In Idaho, the boundary runs from the eastern Montana border down Interstate 15 to Pocatello and east along U.S. 30. Any grizzly bear that crosses Monida Pass west of the Centennial Mountains into Italian Peaks area would once again be under federal control and protection.

That surprised Jim Caswell, director of Idaho's Office of Species Conservation. He was instrumental in writing Idaho's plan for managing grizzly bears after they are delisted. He believed if a Yellowstone bear wandered into central Idaho, it would be under state control.

"There will be some people who feel betrayed," Caswell said. "Maybe even me."

However, the concept of delisting a distinct population segment is exactly what Caswell and Idaho have asked the U.S. Fish and wildlife Service to consider for wolves. They want Idaho's wolves to be delisted even though the federal government has a dispute with Wyoming over wolf rules.

"It's the same argument we've been making," Caswell said.

Louisa Willcox, director of the Natural Resources Defense Fund's Wild Bears Project, said Yellowstone grizzly habitat is still open to oil and gas drilling, logging and road-building that threaten the bears' long-term future.

Many people in the three states, including lawmakers, remain hostile to the bears, said Willcox, who has been a grizzly bear advocate since the mid-1980s.

"Federal protection is the only reason these bears exist in Yellowstone today, and they aren't yet ready to survive without it," Willcox said.

The states are up to the task, believes Tom France, National Wildlife Federation Northern Rockies regional director and also a long-time bear advocate.

"I think most politicians in all three states would regard it as a disaster if the bear population would fall to a place where we were debating relisting," France said.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne succeeded in convincing Norton to drop Interior plans to reintroduce grizzly bears in central Idaho in 2001. Tuesday he praised Norton and the department for its cooperative management with the states that led to the Yellowstone bear's recovery.

"Idaho stands ready to manage grizzly bears under its federally approved plan, and my hope is that this progress can be carried over to other healthy, yet listed, species in the West, like gray wolves," Kempthorne said.

The proposal to delist grizzly bears is big news for the very reason that few species come off the endangered species list, said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who attended the news conference with Norton. That is why he wants the law reformed to make it easier to build partnerships like the grizzly bear recovery program.

"It's the exception not the rule to the Endangered Species Act," Craig said.

 

[BuzzH]

I also remember, "Montana wont have a bison hunt again...the enviro's will shut it down"...

Grizzlies are going off the ES list, count on it.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Well, some things go quick, some things don't, and who knows which way the wind will blow before any thing of real consequence happens...

For any one who has any understanding at all about the Sea lion and Seal populations along the Pacific coast in conjunction and reference with delisting practices that go along with that whole can of worms, will watch the processes of "ANY" delisting with a jaded eye.

Yep, there’s a little difference in the animal species and habitat, but the same Waco’s beating the drums for one species also beat the drums for most others they had a hand in saving from what ever it was they were saving them from.

I don't think this is quite over yet, we will have to see...

And as for the buffalo, it is only a token amount to be hunted to pacify certain noisy groups, even if this hunt goes off with out a hitch, there is still no real plan in the works (from any thing I’ve seen at the meetings I’ve attended or read about in my e-mails on the subject) to up the amount of animals from what it is currently at to a greater number...

If it was a real hunt, they would have allowed more tags that would closer coincide with the amount that is culled each year by the game department...

 

[ELKCHSR]

Here just happens to be an article about what I have stated above for those who just don't want to see that there is more to delisting than this Naa-Naa-Naa attitude that some seem to share...

Surge in US sea lion numbers angers fishermen
By Timothy Gardner

ASTORIA, Ore (Reuters) - A state employee wielding a wooden club walked the slippery docks looking for a sea lion oozing blood from a gunshot wound.

"Have you seen the stinky one?" the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife worker asked a visitor after shooing a gaggle of California sea lions weighing up to 800 pounds (365 kg) off the slick slats. "He was here a few days ago. Somebody shot him and now he's rotting from the inside."

Officials didn't know who shot the rotting sea lion, but many fishermen in the U.S. Northwest are unhappy about a surge in sea lion numbers over the past 25 years. The animals are eating fish, including endangered Pacific salmon, and depleting catches.

"They're eating us alive," Jim Wells, a commercial fisherman, said of sea lions and seals. Wells pulled in his net at the mouth of the Columbia River on a recent day, and a seal, whose smooth black head poked up like a periscope after he unraveled the net, had eaten all but the jaw of a salmon, Wells' only catch.

COMPLAINTS

Hunters in the U.S. Northwest used to slaughter sea lions, sometimes with machine guns, to sell to glue factories or to send their dried penises to China as an aphrodisiac.

That changed when Congress passed the 1972 Marine Mammals Protection Act outlawing the hunting or exporting of California sea lions and harbor seals. Since then, the number of sea lions on the U.S. West Coast where they live have climbed nearly 60 percent to about 300,000, according to the National Marine Fishery Service. Harbor seals are also more numerous.

But commercial and sports fishermen complain about how much endangered Pacific salmon, some of the world's last wild fish, the mammals eat.

Here a few of you bitched and complained about the live release of 2 Bull Trout, but never say a word about this... A whole species is going extinct for the reasons the DELISTING process won't take place and the ENVIRONMENALISTS can't seem to see the light... This is where some of us are coming from when it comes to the complaints of how the delisting process is USUALLY followed...

"They become a huge factor only when so few fish are left for the fishermen to catch," said Glen Spain, a director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermens' Associations.

Sports fishermen say sea lions swipe salmon right off their hooks.

"Sea lions can take a lot of those adults and they can be a problem at fairly specific points in the migration of adult fish," said Jim Lichatowich, a fisheries scientist.

Before overfishing began in the late 1800s, the Columbia River basin supported 16 million salmon. Hydropower dams built during the Great Depression blocked the salmon's migration. And growth in agriculture and home building destroyed streams where salmon spawn. As a result, some 50 populations of Pacific salmon and related steelhead went extinct, according to the fisheries service.

Today their population is a fraction of the original number and survival is in doubt.

WADDLING UP FISH LADDERS

The salmon's migration from the ocean to the inland streams where they breed also makes them vulnerable.

Last spring at the Bonneville Dam, for instance, sea lions waddled up fish ladders designed to allow adult salmon to bypass the dam and spawn. One made it to the observation window where tourists ordinarily watch migrating fish.

"Clearly they take fish," said Jeff Laake, a biologist with the U.S. fisheries service. "Whether that's a problem is a societal view."

Wells worries about spring when the sea lions fatten up before drifting down to California to mate. He said he has seen up to 15 sea lions on his net at once and that when they tire of eating whole fish, they eat only the bellies and eggs and toss the carcasses aside.

Some people risk the Marine Mammal Act's penalties of $10,000, a year in jail, or both, by taking things into their own hands. A California fishing boat captain this year was sentenced to two months in prison for shooting at sea lions.

The Marine Mammal Center near San Francisco treats several sea lions every year that have gunshot wounds.

Fishermen hope one day Congress will amend the marine mammal act to allow culling of the predators.

Others are more cautious. Floyd Holcom, an ex-commercial fisherman, runs a bed and breakfast that overlooks sea lions basking on a rock pile near the pier in Astoria, Oregon.

Holcom said the mammals bring in business. "They are quite the attraction to people who have never seen them before," he said.

 

[JoseCuervo]

Cheese,

Are you that clueless that you don't know the difference of how the Sealions are protected vs. how the Grizzlies are protected?

Are you really that stupid to somehow think they are protected by the same legislation?

Why not learn about stuff before you waste our time posting?

 

[ELKCHSR]

!!!HAHAHA!!!

You really are a goober you phony transplant...

Are you really that stupid to somehow think they are protected by the same legislation?

Now to begin and end with...

Where do you get off asking questions when you won't ever answer any thing of substance any one asks you???

So as I have told you countless times before... you get no answers until you give answers...

Others wanted examples of over exuberance when it comes to saving animals and wildlife, I give one, and you again stray away from the general argument yet again to make yourself look stupid with personal attacks...

Well I can at least say one thing...

You’re consistent...

P.S. I wonder if your learning any thing with this name calling, you even said it is the only way to teach some one... I think I'm getting to like it... Well, at least with a select few that it...

 

[JoseCuervo]

Cheese,

I will defer to your understanding of the law. I was previously unaware that the Marine Mammal Act was relevant to Grizzly Bear.......

You are clueless.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Yep Bob LeBlah...

As so are you...

I see you still haven't put a thing up that states any thing to the contrary (well except for this useless blable that seems to be your trade mark), telling me that I'm wrong doesn't teach any one any thing on whether your right or not, it just shows you can call names and be an ignorant puke...

So as it goes, I still see no relevance to what you posted last or any where on this board for a couple years, except for you being on the defensive and the name calling....

Nothing positive or reinforcing for sportsmen (and women ) any where on this site…

You still haven't proven me wrong on that part and I have my doubts you ever will....

Let’s see you step up to the plate and actually be useful around here... It's been an awful long time but I for one believe you still have it in you, maybe not though, some people just can't seem to pull their lips out of the gutter long enough to help any one (Unless there’s some thing in it for them of course)...

 

[1_pointer]

Here a few of you bitched and complained about the live release of 2 Bull Trout, but never say a word about this... A whole species is going extinct for the reasons the DELISTING process won't take place and the ENVIRONMENALISTS can't seem to see the light... This is where some of us are coming from when it comes to the complaints of how the delisting process is USUALLY followed...

This wouldn't have anything to do with another favorite topic in SI would it????? Would it???

 

[ELKCHSR]

No, but it has a lot of relevance I would imagine...

Especially since Bob LeBlah feels the need to keep a running account of my every move, I sure hope one day I get some of the royalty's garnered from his book...