To Honor Bear 399, Limit Traffic and Development

The world’s most famous grizzly, Bear 399, met her end on the evening of October 22, the victim of a car hurtling through Snake River Canyon south of Jackson, Wyoming. Few wild animals have ever been more beloved: Grizzly 399 lived to 28 years old, raised more than 20 cubs, and was photographed millions of times along Grand Teton National Park’s roadsides. She was an avatar of wildness and parental devotion, and, by virtue of her comfort with humans, our link to the majestic megafauna with whom we share the land. One bear manager told Mountain Journal contributor Kevin Grange that she embodied “adaptability, resiliency, flexibility and loyalty.”

To biologists, 399 represented both an encouraging trend for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s grizzlies—and the perils they face. As grizzly populations within the core GYE have approached carrying capacity, 399 sought unoccupied habitats and new food resources in more developed portions of southern Teton County; few residents forget the evening in November of 2021 when she wandered through downtown Jackson with four cubs in tow. Her calm, human-tolerant personality, and the affection that locals and tourists showered upon her, proved that people and ursids can coexist as grizzly ranges expand out of protected areas. But her violent death also showed that bears and other wandering wildlife confront severe threats—risks that are growing worse by the day.

As 399 could tragically attest, the most pervasive danger to Greater Yellowstone, and the health of wildlands around the world, remains very much unhealed. Our planet is fragmented by 40 million miles of roads, which are collectively prowled by more than a billion vehicles. Although the GYE is a relative bastion of roadlessness—southern Yellowstone is the farthest a bear (or human) can wander from a road in the Lower 48, around 20 miles—it’s still chockablock with motorized routes, from major highways like U.S. 20 and WYO 22 to the thousands of miles of logging and mining tracks that spiderweb the Custer Gallatin and other national forests. These roads, and the traffic that increasingly clogs them, are in large measure responsible for isolating the GYE’s bears from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem around Glacier National Park, and thwarting the genetic exchange that would ensure the long-term health of grizzlies throughout the Northern Rockies. Bears and roads simply don’t mix.

Unfortunately, that fragmentation is only getting worse, not only for bears but for elk, deer, moose and the many other species who must wander beyond Yellowstone’s borders to survive. The 18 counties that encompass Greater Yellowstone are growing rapidly; the population of Bozeman, for one, has exploded by more than 50 percent since 2010, making it among the fastest-growing small cities in the country. Teton County and Jackson continue to boom as more tourist lodging and luxury homes for wealthy retirees and remote workers goes up every year. The unaffordability of Jackson displaces local workers to places like Star Valley, Wyoming, and Victor, Idaho, forcing more people to commute longer distances through prime wildlife habitat, exacerbating roadkill and fragmentation.

Like many other cities and counties, Teton County, Wyoming, and the town of Jackson are fond of making lofty and elaborate plans to reduce traffic and commuting rates, and balance jobs and affordable housing. But the pressure for lodging and luxury housing typically overwhelm these plans. Instead, affordable housing policies are primarily deployed to put a happy face on the unchecked growth of new hotels, short-term rentals, tourist attractions and luxury second homes. Other counties continue to approve more rural subdivisions and up-scale resorts without even pretending to value wildlife.

What can we do about this growing crisis? For starters, we need to redouble our commitment to wildlife crossings and roadside fencing, which allow animals to continue on their journeys and protect drivers by averting dangerous crashes. Crossings and fences have repeatedly proved their worth in Greater Yellowstone.

Along a mule deer and pronghorn migration corridor near Pinedale, Wyoming, six underpasses, two overpasses and fencing have reduced animal collisions by more than 80 percent and facilitated tens of thousands of successful crossings.

New federal funding has helped: The Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program, a $350 million grant initiative included in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, has already allocated funding for safe passage on I-90 and U.S. 93 in Montana, and Highway 189 in Wyoming. Earlier this year, the Montana Department of Transportation applied for federal dollars to build crossings on Highway 191 just south of Gallatin Gateway, and a coalition called Yellowstone Safe Passages has identified wildlife hotspots on Highway 89 in the Paradise Valley that would also benefit from WCPP funding. The program’s future under the Trump Administration is uncertain, but hopefully Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, and other Republicans who have historically promoted wildlife-friendly laws and policies continue to lend their support to safe passage.   

While building new wildlife crossings is a vital step forward, it isn’t by itself sufficient. We can’t install crossings everywhere, and, for all their value, they don’t address every problem that infrastructure creates, particularly the explosion of development that often accompanies expanded road networks. Along with crossings, therefore, we need to emphasize two additional priorities.

First, we must more thoughtfully control development to prevent sprawl from encroaching upon our wildlands. The unmanaged growth of subdivisions both induces more traffic and devours wildlife habitat; per one 2016 study in the scientific journal Global Change Biology, increased residential housing density is more harmful to mule deer fawn survival than even oil and gas wells. Fortunately, local governments can curtail these conflicts. In Chaffee County, Colorado, for instance, county commissioners recently adopted an updated land-use code that restricts development in high-quality wildlife habitat; requires meaningful setbacks from streams and wetlands; encourages clustered building patterns and minimum lot sizes to maintain open space; and prevents the construction of ecologically damaging new roads.

In Greater Yellowstone, groups such as the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of Park County (Montana), and Valley Advocates for Responsible Development (Teton County, Idaho) are working to incorporate conservation in community growth. Zoning and land-use codes may not be the world’s most glamorous subjects, but they’re among our best tools for ensuring responsible development and securing the future of wildlife.

Second, we need to reconsider how we build and operate our highways. Historically, highway departments within the GYE, as everywhere, have emphasized building more highways with wider footprints and faster traffic—a trend that continues today, with the proposed expansion of Highway 22 from Jackson to the Snake River from two lanes to four or more, among other projects. Wildlife crossings can make such roadways less harmful, but nothing makes a highway ecologically benign.

In addition to crossings, then, let’s also adopt other wildlife-friendly principles. For example, engineering roads with lower “design speeds”—think more sinuosity and fewer wide, flat straightaways, akin to many park roads—quells driver speed much more effectively than merely posting lower speed limits. In residential areas, simple traffic-calming measures such as speed bumps, traffic circles and narrower lanes effectively tamp vehicle velocity. (In Crested Butte, strategically arranged flower planters on side streets simultaneously curtail speed and beautify streets.)

Most of all, we need fewer cars on our roads, a reduction we can only achieve through a major commitment to commuter buses. Let’s follow the lead of communities like Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, where once-exploding traffic rates have roughly stabilized since the 2013 introduction of a Bus Rapid Transit system, the first such rural route in the nation, between Aspen and Glenwood Springs. Our national parks, too, need to be partners in this effort. Park units such as Denali, Zion and Glacier have replaced hundreds of thousands of private car trips with public shuttles; there’s no reason that Yellowstone and Grand Teton can’t do the same.

The opportunity to share the land with wildlife is part of why we live in the West—a connection epitomized by our adoration for Bear 399 and her cubs. Few issues have broader public support in our region than safe passage: In most western states, the overwhelming majority of residents want more wildlife crossings. Teton County voters in 2019 decisively approved an excise tax to raise some $10 million for passages, and in the coming years the county plans to construct additional crossings and fences in several key locations, including north of Jackson on Highway 89.

Now we also need to muster the political will to slow traffic, reduce the crush of vehicles clogging our mountain towns, and curb the breakneck development fracturing our ecosystems. We can’t bring back 399, but we still might be able to save her wild brethren.