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David Mattson
- Mar 31, 2016
Partisan Scientists in Public Service I: The Strange Case of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team
Researchers radio-collar an immobilized grizzly bear in this undated IGBST photo. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, hereafter the IGBST, was established in 1973 to provide managers and other stakeholders with reliable scientific information relevant to managing Yellowstone’s grizzly bears. The impetus for constituting this research group grew from a period of stormy and often strident controversy arising from a decision by the National Park Service to cut bears off fro
Louisa Willcox
- Mar 24, 2016
Yellowstone Buffalo Atrocities
This winter, 582 Yellowstone buffalo have been killed, either by hunters or government agents. The killing is escalating as winter drags on and buffalo, desperate for food, leave Yellowstone Park for lower elevation grasslands north in Montana. Hundreds more buffalo could be sent to slaughter or quarantine by the time spring green-up occurs, when buffalo return to graze in the protected core of the Park. Once buffalo approach the border of the nation’s first park, management
Louisa Willcox
- Mar 17, 2016
The Price Tag of Grizzly Bear Delisting
Money and politics have driven decisions about the fate of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears for the last 50 years. You often hear that more is known about Yellowstone grizzly bears than any other population of bears. But the truth is that managers and researchers here have benefitted from ample resources to support research and monitoring primarily because of the controversies that surround this population, not because of any greater curiosity or competence on the part of those in
Louisa Willcox
- Mar 10, 2016
Don't Delist, Risk Yellowstone Grizzly Bears' Future
As Yellowstone grizzly bears begin to reemerge from their dens after winter hibernation, they awake to a debate over what may be their first sport hunt in over 40 years. This was triggered by last week’s proposal by US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to remove federal endangered species protections. Grizzly bears awaken too to a world of mounting threats, including a warming climate, ever more humans, poorly managed livestock, sloppy and incautious big game hunters, and isola
David Mattson
- Mar 3, 2016
Yellowstone's Irreplaceable Grizzlies
Imagine… Imagine a grizzly bear on a cloudy day in May turning over chunks of sod in a wet swale to reveal clots of wriggling earthworms…which it then slurps up. Or, in the next valley over, a bear furiously hopping sideways as it excavates a tunnel in pursuit of an escaping pocket gopher, but then contenting itself with a cache of exposed roots that the gopher had made as winder provender. Or, earlier in the year yet, during April, a grizzly bear flopped on its belly in the
