How Greater Yellowstone Grizzlies Could Be Delisted And Remain Protected
States are pushing hard to remove America's most famous grizzly population from federal protection. The primary reason is obvious. Why aren't we doing the same with bald eagles?
A grizzly bear mother with cubs spotted along the roadside near Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone National Park. Photo courtesy Eric Johnston/NPS
by Todd Wilkinson
In June 2021, headlines appeared in Idaho newspapers announcing that, in a couple of fell swoops, predators had killed 54 sheep on a farm in the Magic Valley near Twin Falls.
The reports echoed of a familiar narrative and might otherwise have pointed in the direction of usual suspects.
Farmer Matthews noted that, at the current killing rate, “in 45 days, I’ll be out of sheep.” He implied that some of the meat-eating attackers seemed to be killing livestock purely for sport. He estimated the value of his lost sheep at $7500 and, by autumn, the toll grew to 60 in a "snowball effect" with another 15 that “just disappeared."
Welzbacker also interviewed a state wildlife official. “Idaho Department of Fish and Game regional wildlife biologist Lyn Snoddy said [the predators] 'strike from above and use their [claws] to grab the animals. In this process, they can sever internal arteries and wait for the animal to bleed out.'”
Describing similar depredations in other parts of the country, Jennen Bell Hoffman, a reporter at another publication, the venerable news outlet, Tractor Supply Magazine, wrote that the predators’ sharp tools “can slice through hide in seconds.”
Alluding to their pack-like hunting techniques and how they hold quietly in the trees until the opportunity is right, the reporter added, “They wait and observe. It’s a matter of seconds before dinner is served….This is not the opening scene of a horror movie, but instead the reality faced by many farmers and ranchers across the country.”
“They wait and observe. It’s a matter of seconds before dinner is served….This is not the opening scene of a horror movie, but instead the reality faced by many farmers and ranchers across the country.” —Jennen Bell Hoffman, reporter for Tractor Supply Magazine
To make sure readers understood how serious a menace the predators are, the story referred to them as “ferocious and stealthy hunters, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in livestock and poultry losses annually.”
There was, however, no major public outcry. No claims that these predators represent a dire and existential threat to the livestock industry or other wildlife populations; no calls to initiate bounty programs, or enlist sport hunters and trappers to control the vile vermin and knock down their numbers to “manageable levels”; no adding these predators to the lists of critters in hunting contests where prizes are awarded to those who kill the biggest or most animals, nor was there any rhetorical grandstanding in Congress to legislatively remove them from federal protection as a way to validate states’ rights, freedoms and liberties.
Had the stories above involved predation by wolves, grizzlies or mountain lions, there would have been outrage, but because the culprits were America’s national symbol, bald eagles, you may not have heard much about the incidents even though we live in cattle and sheep country.
The US Department of Agriculture, in a published 2015 survey of ranchers and farmers, reported that eagles killed 6,680 cattle calves nationwide, representing about 2.8 percent of predation on calves caused by wildlife. Dogs killed 15,740 calves, representing 6.6 of total losses, mountain lions killed 11,500 or about 4.8 percent, wolves killed 8110 or about 3.4 percent, and bears killed 1,810 calves or about 0.8 percent. Coyotes were blamed for killing 126,810 calves, accounting for 53.1 percent of losses attributed to predators.
A gathering of bald eagles at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge near Dorris, California. Photo courtesy Dave Menke/USFWS
Between 2015 and 2020, according to the US Department of Agriculture, Montana wool growers lost between 700 and 1200 sheep annually to eagles (bald and golden). The tally for 2020 was more than twice the number—500— lost to grizzly and black bears; three times the number of losses attributed to wolves; and 200 more than were blamed on mountain lions.
Some 13,000 sheep deaths were owed to coyotes. “Coyotes accounted for 71.2 percent of the predator caused losses and 33.6 percent of all death losses in the state,” the report said. “The value of losses attributed to coyotes was $2.52 million.”
The amount of economic loss owed to eagle predation in 2020 was $216,000; for bears, it was $104,000; for wolves, $82,000 and for mountain lions $64,000.
In Wyoming, in 2020, the deaths of 3,100 sheep and lambs was blamed on eagles, and in 2021 the number shot up to 4,000, compared to both species of bears blamed for 400, wolves for 300, and mountain lions 800. Coyotes in 2021 were blamed for killing 15,400 sheep and lambs across the state.
In terms of dollar value of the loses, the report said it was more than $700,000 for eagles, $2.8 million for coyotes, $145,00 for lions, $57,000 for wolves and $80,000 for bears. In Utah, where there are no grizzlies or wolves, 1300 losses were reportedly caused by eagles. Eagles also are viewed by some with antagonism because they eat trout out of private fish ponds.
Livestock owners often say that stock losses are chronically under-reported while those who scrutinize the stats and federal and state predator control programs say they are often exaggerated.
Why does this matter?
Photo of Grizzly 399 by Thomas D. Mangelsen
Today there is a new push being made on Capitol Hill in both the House and Senate to force a political delisting of both the Greater Yellowstone population of grizzlies and the other main concentration of bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem from protection under the Endangered Species Act. Together, those populations are estimated to have around 2,000 grizzlies.
The legislation is called the Grizzly Bear State Management Act, and its sponsors from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, when introducing it earlier this year, made several assertions about impact on game herds, livestock and threats of human safety that just are not true, but the assertions might ring true with people who don’t know better.
The present political arguments being made for delisting those populations and turning their management over to the states go something like this:
State management of bears will be superior to federal management. That we as a nation recover species so they can be hunted again. Third, grizzlies have met numeric biological targets for recovery and there are now so many of them, it’s time to open a sport season. Fourth, hunting can be employed as a tool for eliminating problem “conflict bears.” Fifth, hunting bears for fun and sport is a way of rewarding sportsmen who have been deprived the opportunity to harvest them. Sixth, issuing bear tags will generate a lot of revenue for the states. Seventh: Hunting of a species results in more social tolerance, less poaching and a stronger willingness to protect it by citizens.
Consider this thought exercise: If the rationale is that America recover species so that they can be hunted again as trophies and for meat, then why don’t we sport hunt bald eagles?
Bald eagle recovery is an astounding success. They were removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2007. They and peregrine falcons, too, were brought back, yet we do not hunt and trap them. One reason for that with bald—and golden eagles— is that they are also protected by two other laws—the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act which also protects peregrines.
Regarding the argument that grizzlies ought to be hunted because they’ve surpassed minimum numeric recovery targets and are ranging more widely beyond the core of their recovery areas, consider what’s happened with bald eagles.
In 1963, there were just 417 known nesting pairs of bald eagles in the entire Lower 48. The white-crowned raptors previously had been killed as nuisances, for their plumage and after World War II decimated by the pesticide DDT which was banned. Today, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Migratory Bird Program, the bald eagle population was recently estimated at 316,700 individuals in the Lower 48, including 71,400 nesting pairs. The total population has quadrupled since 2009, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
The total number of bald eagles is nearly 1000 times larger and more widely distributed than when the species was listed in 1967. The Greater Yellowstone grizzly population may be between seven and nine times larger than when it spiraled toward its nadir of fewer than 140 bears in the 1970s. Plus, while eagles are relatively slow to reproduce, grizzlies have an even slower reproduction rate.
So, solely for the sake of argument, if it’s good for grizzlies, why not have a limited sport season on bald eagles? It could generate jobs and income for taxidermists who could turn them into trophies perfect for decorative display on the wall. It could help reduce predation on cattle and sheep and give hunters the chance to "harvest" "conflict eagles." Similar to grizzlies, which most hunters do not eat, the states could offer tasty recipes just as Wyoming did for grizzlies.
Further, it’s been a long time since hunters have been prevented from being able to sit in a blind and bait or call in eagles. Haven’t they waited and suffered from being deprived that opportunity long enough? That’s one of the arguments made for recommencing a sport hunt of grizzlies.
Lastly, think of the revenue-generating possibilities that could be realized by selling bald eagle tags. Since a huge percentage of eagles migrate, like waterfowl, there could be a spring and autumn season. Last year, the Wyoming office of the Bureau of Land Management announced that citizen volunteers had counted 576 eagles—376 bald and 153 goldens—on a single day along 1500 miles of highway in the Powder River Basin alone. The tally was the highest recorded since 2006 when the counting began.
Photo of stuffed grizzly on display behind glass at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton Park
In 2018, when Wyoming was about to launch its first sport hunt of grizzlies in 44 years, it planned to issue 22 bear tags. States could push to have bald eagles classified as a trophy animal and probably a lot more hunting tags than those for grizzlies could be issued and sold. They could be stalked using baits as black bears are, night-vision infra-red goggles, as wolves are, and pursued with drones. To appease trappers, the raptors could also be trapped with steel leg holds or snared.
Certainly, some in-state and out of state hunters would probably jump at the opportunity to patriotically demonstrate their love of country by having our national avian symbol portrayed as a trophy in the game room, either presented in flight or in a majestic perch pose. Think of the boasting rights it would bring to successful hunters and the priceless stories of adventure that could be told and videos of the outings shared on youtube. Note: federal law does allow for bald eagle feathers and parts to be available for indigenous religious ceremonies but it is regulated.
All of the above is presented here somewhat in jest. However, the questions being raised are serious ones. For all of the reasons why grizzlies, wolves and mountain lions should be hunted, why not bald eagles? Or wild horses and burros? Or whales or manatees? Many people reading this would find those scenarios to be appalling and heretical.
When a species is federally protected, all Americans are stakeholders. When an animal is delisted, it becomes the jurisdictional domain of the state where it lives and is managed on behalf of citizens in that state by the state fish and game agency.
The truth is there’s no hard and fast rule that says animals recovered through the Endangered Species Act are therefore hunted. It’s an option some states decide to exercise as a reflection of prevailing values. Why society—and politically appointed state fish and game commissioners— choose to allow hunting of certain species is subjective, arbitrary, political and sometimes specious; it’s not based on any compelling scientific rationale.
Top: As an icon, the bald eagle is featured as a subject of many decorative art items that citizens proudly display in their homes and offices. Just above: If eagles were hunted as trophies, and portrayed flying or perched on a tree snag, would that also be an expression of one's patriotic spirit?
Anthropomorphically, bald eagles have been turned into symbols. Mated pairs are together for life and we attach virtues to them such as courage, strength, valor, beauty, honor, intelligence and loyalty—traits which could also be ascribed to grizzlies. Who would doubt Jackson Hole Grizzly 399’s faithfulness to her 18 cubs, her family values in raising them, and her intelligence in being able to non-aggressively navigate throngs of humans?
Where does the public stand on hunting grizzlies? Various indicators suggest it’s all over the place. A Marist Poll in November 2015 found that "a majority of Americans, 56%, opposes hunting animals for sport, and most Americans, 86%, consider big game hunting to be especially distasteful." Among the hundreds of thousands of public comments submitted in response to federal and state proposals to delist, the overwhelming majority are opposed to delisting and sport hunting grizzlies. But inside the Greater Yellowstone states, sentiments are more nuanced. The grizzly conservation site, Grizzly Times, operated by Louisa Willcox and her husband, bear researcher David Mattson, references polling done by Wyoming Game and Fish going back to the start of this new millennium.
While other polls suggest that citizens overwhelmingly favor grizzly conservation, some indicate that state residents would disagree with the findings of the Marist Poll. Earlier this year, the University of Montana and Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks unveiled research into the public attitudes of Montanans. Alex Metcalf, a university professor and co-author of the study published in Conservation Science and Practice, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: “We found 80 percent to 90 percent of respondents think bears have a right to exist—that they make Montana special and that we need to learn to live with them.”
Along with this, over 80 percent of respondents wanted some sort of grizzly hunting: 30 percent supported a limited hunting season that wouldn’t impact population size, 49 percent supported enough hunting to manage the population, and just under 4 percent wanted as much grizzly bear hunting as possible. Almost 17 percent of respondents said that grizzly bears should never be hunted, reported Isabel Hicks.
In Wyoming this spring, Dan Thompson, senior large carnivore specialist with Wyoming Game and Fish, told Mike Koshmyrl of Wyofile that if bears are delisted 39 hunting tags could be issued in the demographic monitoring area [DMA] portion of Wyoming where bear mortality is closely watched. And more tags could be available for hunting bears outside the zone. Koshmyrl added: “If delisting proceeds, Montana and Idaho could hunt grizzly bears, too. The overall number of grizzlies that could be hunted in the DMA throughout the whole ecosystem is 69, Thompson said, breaking down to 51 males and 18 females. Wyoming is allocated more than half of that sum because the majority of grizzly range falls in state bounds.”
Does hunting of carnivores result in a willingness of states and their cititzens to better protect them? A deep dive into the relationship between hunting and public attitudes toward wolves was published in 2017 in the Journal of Mammology, led by noted conservation biologist John Vucetich and co-authors Jeremy Bruskotter, Michael Paul Nelson, Joseph Bump and noted Upper Midwest wolf ecologist Rolf Peterson.
“There is no evidence to suggest that killing quenches hatred or promotes tolerance. For example, survey data indicate that wolf hunters in Montana were no more tolerant of wolves after the 2011 wolf hunting season than they were before,” they write. “Also, a recent review found no evidence for the claim that allowing higher quotas of legal hunt resulted in reduced rates of poaching. Moreover, attitudes toward wolves tended to be more negative during a period of time when legal lethal control had been allowed than when wolves had been fully protected.”
Which brings us to the point of this exercise: Why can’t grizzlies be treated the same way and with the same level of respect as bald eagles? Most importantly, is there a way grizzlies could be delisted and, like bald eagles, be simultaneously protected?
° ° ° °
On the back of a napkin at Ted’s Montana Grill restaurant in Bozeman, Montana, I was taking notes as Robert Keiter advanced a hypothetical notion.
Keiter explained a way out of the current socio-cultural-biological quagmire that involves grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and their federal protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Keiter is not a person who engages in advancing whimsical flight-of-fancy ideas. He is the Wallace Stegner Professor of Law at the University of Utah Law School. He is an expert on federal environmental laws and earlier in his career he wrote a book, The Wyoming Constitution, that is considered the definitive overview.
Here's the dilemma with Greater Yellowstone grizzlies, he says. Proponents of delisting say that recovery criteria have been met and therefore bears should be removed from federal protection. The integrity of the law is at stake, so lawmakers assert, and "bears need to be managed" though a limited "harvest."
Grizzly advocates, who have prevailed twice in getting delisting reversed in court, don’t want it to happen because one of the states’ prime motivations, they argue, is to restore sport hunting. They claim bears already are being managed quite well through federal and state collaboration that sometimes involves translocating or lethally removing bears, but it works.
Keiter proposes a third way in which both sides could claim victory. “What if the federal government removed the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population from its ESA protection and then put bears under the safeguarding of a new federal law. You could call it the Greater Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Protection Act,” Keiter says.
Under this scenario, grizzlies would be delisted from the Endangered Species Act and simultaneously protected under the federal Greater Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Protected Act. Recently, in a Mountain Journalspecial report, it was shown how Wyoming, for example, benefits economically far more from having a watchable population of bears than the amount of money it spends on dealing with conflicts or revenue that would be generated through selling bear tags.
Anticipating that the states would frame permanent protection as a financial imposition, Keiter suggested a remedy for addressing those concerns.
The commercial airport in Jackson Hole which is located in Grand Teton National Park. Grandfathered into permanent existence in the 1980s, it is today the busiest in the state and a source of major noise and visual intrusion into the normally peaceful and tranquil setting of the national park. Were an enplanement fee initiated here to generate money for managing grizzlies, could it speed their removal from protection under the ESA? Photo from Shutterstock ID: 564464/seablox
There are many different ways revenue could be generated through a public tax or it could be done through the private sector with private corporations and individuals establishing a fund to underwrite the costs of agencies implementing the Greater Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Protection Act.
One possibility would be putting in place a modest enplanement fee at the major Greater Yellowstone airports, which every year are handling a growing number of tourists coming here to see bears and wolves. Bozeman and Jackson Hole are home to the busiest airports in Montana and Wyoming. In 2022, Bozeman notched a record 2.2 million travelers, which represents 40 percent of all travelers coming to Montana. Jackson Hole is rapidly approaching the one million mark.
If each traveler landing in Bozeman and Jackson Hole were assessed a $10 enplanement fee, which Keiter describes as a Greater Yellowstone conservation tax in recognition of its world-class wildlife, it would generate $32 million annually. The amount of the tax would not be cost prohibitive for any air traveler and each one could be given a commemorative pass explaining how they are directly supporting wildlife conservation. Even more money would be pooled if the tax were extended to travelers landing in Billings, West Yellowstone, Idaho Falls and Cody.
At Jomo Kenyatta/Nairobi International Airport in Kenya, gateway to the Serengeti and other East African national parks, international travelers pay a $40 fee when they leave the country and less for people catching domestic flights.
As a recent study shows, visitors to Yellowstone told surveyors they would be willing to pay twice the entrance fee if they knew they had a better chance of seeing a grizzly.
The money generated through enplanement fees, distributed to the Greater Yellowstone states and federal partners, would more than pay for all bear management costs, including livestock losses owed to all carnivores, plus pad the budgets of state wildlife agencies, plus be used to incentivize private land conservation and co-existence programs in the counties plus continue to fuel critical scientific research carried out by the federal Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
“The grizzly might be one of those species, like the bald eagle, that ought to remain protected forever,” said, Keiter, who wrote an important and widely-praised policy analysis in 2020 titled The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Revisited: Law, Science and the Pursuit of Ecosystem Management in an Iconic Landscape. “It could be argued that grizzlies will face even more threats as we go forward into the future than eagles which are more highly adaptive and inhabit a much wider range.”
Those who want bears delisted because they claim the ESA has done its job and management should be given back to the states win, and so, too, do people who believe bears need permanent protection given the growing amount of pressures they face.
Why do we, as a nation, bother rescuing species from the brink of extinction?
Why do we put so much effort into preventing wild animals from disappearing from a given region?
Why do we reintroduce species that were reduced or exterminated and what kind of second chance are we giving them?
We ought to know and understand why we approach those questions differently for bald eagles than we do for grizzly bears. If we don’t know why, what does that say about us?
About Todd Wilkinson
Todd Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, is author of the book Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and American's Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem. Wilkinson has been writing about Greater Yellowstone for 35 years and is a correspondent to publications ranging from National Geographic to The Guardian. He is author of several books on topics as diverse as scientific whistleblowers and Ted Turner, and a book about the harrowing story of Jackson Hole grizzly mother 399, the most famous bear in the world which features photographs by Thomas Mangelsen. For more information on Wilkinson, click here. (Photo by David J Swift).
