The relocation is another in a series of transplants to bolster the weak grizzly population of the Cabinet-Yaak-
Bear managers have been releasing about one new grizzly each year into the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear recovery area of extreme NW Montana. This smallish recovery area has no connection to NW Montana’s Northern Continental Divide grizzly area (the country’s biggest population) or Idaho and Eastern Washington’s beleaguered Selkirk grizzly recovery area.
This transplant, like most of the others, came from the Northern Continental Divide bear population. She was trapped in the Whitefish Mountains just west of Glacier National Park to be released further west in the Cabinets.
Female Grizzly Relocated to Cabinet Mtns of NW Montana. Flathead Beacon. AP
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project and the creator of The Wildlife News.
Maybe they need to start releasing bears in areas between these recovery zones?
Now to the Bitteroots as well like the 2001 plan before Bush nixed it.
The Bitterroot Plan could be started back up fairly rapidly because then Secretary of Interior Gale Norton did not reverse the plan or reject it, she just declined to implement it after Idaho’s governor at the time, Dirk Kempthorne, moaned and groaned about having big anti-social carnivores on the land.
I wish they would reintroduce them into the Bitterroots. Then maybe they can have a source population for other areas and ensure some connectivity in other areas.