A few weeks ago, I offered my perspective on threats to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under the Trump administration and our current Congress (link). The ESA is critically important, and the reason why we still have a number of species and populations that would otherwise be extinct or gravely imperiled, including grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies. There is consensus across the political and ideological spectrum that federal and state efforts under auspices of the ESA have benefited grizzly bears enormously. No matter where the debate over status of Yellowstone and Glacier ecosystem grizzlies leads, their story is an ESA success. The grizzly bear was listed as threatened throughout t
One of the few bright spots in today’s otherwise bleak landscape of grizzly bear conservation is a proposal to augment a remnant of grizzlies in the wild country of Washington’s North Cascades. The handful of bears still hanging on there have little chance of recovering on their own. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) proposal is laudable and stands in stark contrast to its potentially devastating plans to strip endangered species protections from Yellowstone and Glacier grizzlies and allow a state-sponsored sport hunt. Indeed, the grizzly bear recovery program in the North Cascades should be studied by managers of healthier grizzly bear ecosystems to learn a few lessons. In January, t
Photos By David Mattson Last Tuesday, in the shadow of Yellowstone’s Electric Peak, I watched National Park Service employees herd, prod, shock, immobilize, poke, and corral bison that had only shortly before spent their lives roaming wild. That day, 45 animals were shipped for slaughter and 62 “processed” in preparation for being sent to death next week. So far this winter, almost 1,000 out of a total of roughly 5,500 bison have been sentenced to death by government agents or dispatched by hunters. The killing of Yellowstone’s buffalo is far from over. The carnage is escalating as winter drags on and buffalo, desperate for food, leave Yellowstone Park for lower elevation grasslands north in
