Unless folks know the country, it might not seem unusual to learn a grizzly was captured and released in Northwest Montana. However, the Salish Range lies between the “Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem” and the “Cabinet-Yaak” grizzly recovery area.
Twenty years ago bear researchers hoped to find interchange of bears between the Cabinet-Yaak, and its small grizzly population and the much larger population in the Northern Continental Divide (Glacier NP, Bob Marshall, Great Bear, Scapegoat Wilderness, and surrounding country).
They found none, neither in NW Montana nor northward in B.C. This is the first officially located bear between the two areas.
A regenerating clearcut in the thickly forested Salish Range, Montana.
Copyright Ralph Maughan
Read the about it in the Daily InterLake (Kalispell, MT). Article.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
