Staff Reporter. The Biden administration will restart planning to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades Range, a project the Trump administration halted in 2020. The first of six meetings on the bear reintroduction plan is Wednesday in Winthrop. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. The public overwhelmingly supports reintroduction of this native species, as the bears are an integral part of healthy forest and mountain habitats in the Cascades. Now, theNorth Cascades Ecosystem Grizzly Bear Environmental Impact Statement process is back on. The fearsome grizzly bear attracted a lot of attention and response last week in a column by Mariel Garza about a proposal to reintroduce the brown bear to the Golden State. Daily News Updates The Rewilding Institute supports the active reintroduction of Grizzly Bears to the North Cascades Ecosystem (NCE). North Cascades National Park, located roughly at its center, was the least-visited national park in the contiguous 48 states in 2021. I hope it doesnt come back to haunt TRI. At one point, they occupied less than two percent of their historic range, but due to significant recovery efforts there are now populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming. Grizzly bears were added to the list of threatened species in the lower 48 states in 1975 and have been listed as an endangered species in Washington since 1980. The department began planning the environmental review process in 2015 under the Obama administration. The National Park Service and U.S. A previous restoration effort was started and stopped twice between 2017 and 2020. Cookie Settings/Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Kate McFarland, TRI Deputy Director What accounted for the big jump in comments? The way they move, and the way they sun themselves and lay there, they move like a house cat. It may not display this or other websites correctly. If the program is approved, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife expects that it will both support the federal effort at monitoring the population and outreach to local residents. The Last Grizzlies of Oregon Fish & Wildlife Service announced Thursday they have restarted the. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Feds again consider reintroducing grizzlies to North Cascades Grizzly populations grew over the past 10 years in two areas - the Yellowstone region, with more than 700 bears, and around Glacier National Park in Montana, which is home to more than 1,000. Reintroduce Grizzlies into CA | Rokslide Forum Central Washingtons Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse was quick to criticize the plan. The White House pollinator health task force co-chaired by the EPA is scheduled to issue its findings before the spring planting season begins. We had no idea this announcement today was going to be made, said Andrea Zaccardi, the carnivore conservation legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity. These bears will not recover in the North Cascades on their own as the area is far too isolated from existing populations. It wasnt a lack of food or other resources. PHOENIX - An Arizona conservation group wants the federal government to consider reintroducing grizzly bears into the state. What we need is a grizzly nursery. The idea of reintroducing grizzlies to the region has been proposed before. A grizzly forages in Wyoming Photo: Bryant Aardema -bryants wildlife images / Moment via Getty. Fish and Wildlife Service released a document in January describing four ideas for reintroducing grizzly bears to the North Cascadesregion in Washington state. By Brent Crane Mar 12, 2019 12:00 AM. Join Outside+ to get access to exclusive content, 1,000s of training plans, and more. They belong here, Joe Scott, international program director for Conservation Northwest, said in a statement. Once we have an "army" of these bears built up, we air drop them into heavily populated areas of CA and let them work their magic. Also, he said, The Oatmeal will feature fewer bear-mauling jokes. Subscribe | Support, The Wisdom of Bears and the Perfidy of Bureaucracy, Government Agents Kill Endangered Mexican Gray Wolf Father, Threatening Packs Survival, Expansion and Restoration of Bison to Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Daily Weather Forecast Oregon as Grizzly Country SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) The federal government is scrapping plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades ecosystem. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 4/4/2023), Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/26/2023). This is a first step toward bringing balance back to the ecosystem and restoring a piece of the Pacific Northwests natural and cultural heritage, North Cascades Superintendent Don Striker said in a news release. My constituents and I have consistently opposed proposals to [reintroduce grizzly bears] under multiple administrations because introducing an apex predator to the area would threaten the families, wildlife, and livestock of North Central Washington, state Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-4th Dist., said in a news release. The North Cascades Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone will encompass the North Cascades National Park, plus several neighboring designated Wilderness Areas. That could change if a federal program to reintroduce the bears to the Northern Cascades Ecosystem is approved by the Department of the Interior. Grizzly bear just north of the National Elk Refuge in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo. If you would like to share a story idea, please submit it here. OtoPro SoundGear Phantom and Impulse Review, Vortex Razor HD 4000 GB Rangefinder Review, Toric UHD 2.5-15x44mm FFP Hunt Series Riflescope Review, Hunting Big Mule Deer after Mid-October with Cliff Gray. Representative Newhouse has been a tireless advocate for his community and his constituents regarding plans to reintroduce grizzly bears into the North Cascades Ecosystem,said Secretary Bernhardt. It will take decades to do so and were confident that grizzly bears will thrive here just as they do in other wild places and parks, which have served as a model for the rest of the world.. Reading essays like this warms my heart and makes me dream of better days in the future! We are advancing Smart from the Start principles to minimize the impacts of renewable energy development on sensitive species like birds and bats. "With grizzlies in particular, people see them like a Tyrannosaurus rex, when in reality they're more like scaredy-cats," he said. I strongly encourage the people of Central Washington to attend the virtual meetings in order to voice their opinion and put this misguided proposal to rest, once and for all.. People killed them, said Jason Ransom, who leads the wildlife program at North Cascades National Park. The Upper Skagit people coexisted with grizzly bears in the region for nearly 10,000 years pre-contact,Scott Schuyler, policy representative for the Upper Skagit Tribe, said in a statement. In a news release on Thursday, he criticized the decision to restart it and urged the Biden administration to consider local input. Send a message to the National Park Service in support of grizzly restoration in the North Cascades. Feds scrap plans to reintroduce grizzlies to North Cascades We focus on the need for large carnivores and protected wildways for their movement; and we offer a bold, scientifically credible, practically achievable, and hopeful vision for the future of wild Nature and human civilization on planet Earth. Fish and Wildlife Service released a document in January describing four ideas for reintroducing grizzly bears to the North Cascades region in Washington. To me, it doesn't make sense to sink time and money into screwing with them if they'll become this untouchable thing that may or may not ever even be managed appropriately, let alone hunted. Species reintroduction - Wikipedia "Black bears are more abundant than cougars," Akenson said. After that, the agencies would manage the bear population, expecting the bears population to grow to about 200 in another 60 to 100 years. Severe Weather Grizzly Bears Might Return to California. Is the State Ready? It will include considering a nonessential experimental population designation under the Endangered Species Act. More information on public involvement and the planning process is available online. 6 The caves also show a number of scratch marks thought to have been made by the claws of bears. The North Cascades is one of the largest wilderness areas in the Lower 48. "Here I am trying to tell people, 'Bears are sweet, calm down.' The first of six meetings on the bear reintroduction plan is . Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 4/4/2023), Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/26/2023). In this Sept. 25, 2013, photo, a pair of grizzly bear cubs forage for food a few miles from the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, Mont. The Associated Press reports responders have deployed absorbent pads and protective booms. As a result, laws prohibiting the hunting of otters were put in place in 1911. Federal agencies are yet again considering plans to bring grizzly bears home to the deep forested valleys of the North Cascades where they once thrived. North Cascades National Park has renewed efforts to evaluate how grizzly bears could be reintroduced to the park, restarting the effort that began in 2014 under the Obama administration. The grizzly has profound cultural significance and its restoration will enrich our ancestral lands and help restore the foundations of our cultural practices. The federal government on Tuesday, July 7, 2020, decided to scrap plans . The introduction of grizzly bears into the North Cascades would directly, and negatively, impact the people and the communities I represent, Newhouse said in the statement. Grizzlies havent been spotted with certainty in the North Cascades since 1996, the National Park Service said in a news release. The plan, jointly created by the National Parks Service and U.S. Dept. I would personally put money, time, and physical effort to help make this happen. (The Center Square) Grizzly bear sightings have become a rare event in Washington state. The public comment period on grizzly bear restoration in the North Cascades will remain open until October 24th, 2019. In 2014, under the Obama administration, federal officials announced a grizzly recovery study. Can you tell myth from fact? Representative Dan Newhouse (R-WA), whose district includes part of the North Cascades ecosystem, welcomed the Trump administrations termination of the reintroduction process in 2015. He said reintroducing the bears would be a threat to families, wildlife and livestock. Feasibility of Timber Wolf Reintroduction in Adirondack Park / Paul C. Paquet, James R. Strittholt and Nancy L. Staus / [et al.]. An estimated 60,000 grizzly bears inhabit North America, half of them in Alaska. The Wilderness Act dictates that areas designated as Wilderness by the U.S. Congress shall be kept untrammeled and free of mechanical conveyance. Administration restarts planning to put grizzlies in North Cascades Your instinct is you want to pet them and play with them, but you can't. A final decision could take years. Please add you voice and speak up for grizzly recovery efforts in the North Cascades. A study published this week describes the work, which OPB's Cassandra Profita calls "an atlas of insect-caused tree mortality." Earlier this year, Alagona dispatched post-doctoral researcher Alex McInturff to Bishop, in the Eastern Sierras, to gauge local attitudes around grizzly reintroduction an initiative unavoidably restructured when COVID-19 scuppered plans for focus groups and on-site interviews. Approximately 2,000 exist in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. ET): A previous version of this article misstatedone of the services helping to reintroduce grizzly bears. The only problem with this plan is that it would really mean introducing bears to the only parts of CA that don't suckthe rural areas where people are generally not insane. It is the U.S. We must all work together to make this . The animal activist buying tags thread got me thinking. JavaScript is disabled. The environmental group Conservation Northwest says it is disappointed in the decision. These massive bears once roamed across much of western North America, from central New Mexico up to the Arctic Ocean, but due to habitat loss and over hunting, their population fell precipitously in the twentieth century. By Tuesday, however, that number had jumped to about 110,000, she said. If we bring grizzlies they aren't going to put them in the coast range. A grizzly limb bone discovered in Oregon Caves in the Klamath Mountains may be more than 50,000 years old, which would rank among the earliest brown-bear fossils found in North America. According to the latest estimates by biologists, its likely that fewer than 10 grizzly bears remain in the North Cascades. We support the recovery of large carnivores and other strongly interactive species, including Grizzly Bears, wherever possible in their native ranges. Is a Reintroductiton of the California Grizzly Bear Likely - InsideHook 2022. The Department of the Interior began planning the environmental review process in 2015 under the Obama administration. We urge conservationists to work together toward a Grizzly Bear recovery plan in the North Cascades that respects the welfare of individual bears, ecosystem health, and Wilderness values. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. They asked for public comments on the proposals, which range from doing nothing to building a new population of 200 bears within 25 years. The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity filed a . Its estimated there are currently less than 20 grizzlies in the state, though a female was fitted with a radio collar and released last year, along with her three cubs, according to the Washington DFW. In a press release, the NPS said that the agencies would begin work on a new Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate several potential plans for reintroducing the animals, including naming them a 10(j) experimental population. Active restoration is needed for ecological, as well as ethical, reasons. Bears are the same. The USFWS has proposed four alternative approaches for grizzly bear restoration, ranging from a No Action approach to an Expedited Restoration approach, with varying degrees of government involvement in the reintroduction of grizzly bears from other regions to the North Cascades. As they eat and travel throughout their range, they spread seeds and nutrients, and as they dig for bulbs and other food in the ground, they help to aerate the soil. Bear numbers in Washington dwindled due to hunting in the late 1800s, landing the grizzly on the endangered species list 40 years ago. of Fish and Wildlife, is to take bears either from British Columbia or northwest Montana and introduce them into the Northern Cascades at the rate of 3 to 7 bears per year. The National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service will investigate reintroducing grizzly bears to Washingtons North Cascades, restarting a process the Trump administration halted seven years ago, the federal government said on Thursday. Grizzlies Vanished From the Cascades Decades Ago. The Feds Want to And on Friday, Inman published a post titled "I need 50,000 comments on a government website.". The North Cascades has some of the most productive grizzly bear habitat in the world, said Chris Servheen, the former chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Bear Expert Group for the U.S. The wolves have kept the park's population of elks . The view of The Rewilding Institute is that the Wilderness Act should not be so dogmatically interpreted as to proscribe vital restoration measures, but should be holistically interpreted to weigh heavily in favor of minimalist tools and intervention. This means by protecting them, we'll be able to protect a wide variety of species because of the fact that grizzly bears require such a large area to thrive. The Key Arguments for Both Sides of the Wolf Reintroduction Debate in The National Park Service and U.S. It does make for a very long road again to start from scratch, pretty much.. Can Washington State Save the Fewer Than 10 Grizzly Bears It Has Left Support reintroducing grizzly bears to the North Cascades Threatened grizzly bears could roam again in the wildest reaches of Washington state. U.S. Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt told a meeting. More than 125 organizations have called upon national leaders to restrict certain pesticides in an effort to save pollinators. But habitat connections to the closest healthy Grizzly Bear populations, further north in British Columbia, have been broken by human development, precluding Grizzlies from being able to repopulate the NCE. The federal government is seeking public input on its plan to reintroduce the bears into the state, where they once numbered in the thousands. This is balancing on a pinhead. Its been a long road to recovery for the grizzly. Theres lots of real estate for bears to occupy.. It wasnt a lack of habitat. This alternative is expected to produce the goal population of 200 bears in 60-100 years. Under the proposal, the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife would capture bears from either British Columbia or the Northern Continental Divide of the U.S. About three to seven would be released in the North Cascades each year, over the course of about five to 10 years. The post was uncommonly unfunny, Inman acknowledged on Tuesday, saying that he'd done it in a rush to beat the comments deadline. But the idea languished without money for a multiyear . "They don't subsist on hikers. They're like a cute, 800-pound, apex predator dog. Group seeks to reintroduce grizzlies to Selway-Bitterroots The agencies would aim to establish an initial population of 25 bears. Grizzly reintroduction in the North Cascades became a hot issue in the Northwest and during the Trump administration, when restoration plans were subject to changing political whims. Why not SF too? Terry Tollefsbol/USFWS The National. Fish & Wildlife Service, not the U.S. Forest Service. 2. And at the same time I have a card game telling people that bears eat babies," Inman said. In the face of Euro-American settlement, Oregon grizzlies seemed to retreat fairly steadily in the mid- to late-1800s to three redoubts: the Klamath Mountains (including the Siskiyous), the Southern Cascades, and the Blue/Wallowa Mountains (including Hells Canyon country). Thursdays announcement was lauded by environmental advocates. Cascadia | Defenders of Wildlife For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Others criticized the plan as negatively impacting the region. This is a first step toward bringing balance back to the ecosystem and restoring a piece of the Pacific Northwests natural and cultural heritage, North Cascades National Park Superintendent Don Striker said in a news release. The Bitterroot and North Cascades Ecosystems have no known bears occupying the habitat, though some bears do reside on the British Columbia side of the Cascades. What we need is a grizzly nursery. The Forest Service Wants to Hear From You. Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse released a statement in response to the environmental impact statement, inviting the public to get involved with the process and submit comments. KTVZ NewsChannel 21 is committed to providing a forum for civil and constructive conversation. The agency's criteria for GYE grizzly bears calls for a minimum of 500 individuals and at least 48 females with cubs. Now that the comments period has been extended to April 28, he's have time for more pro-bear comics. A grizzly bear and cub in Yellowstone National Park. Local and national environmental groups have praised the decision. Bringing Back the Grizzly Bear to the North Cascades Babies," in which the object is to build a monstrous bear - the example Inman gives is "a grizzly bear made of chain saws who can run at the speed of light" - that eats babies. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are . Nobody has seen a grizzly bear in Washington since 1996, but that could change soon. As with anything involving predators in the West, this is a controversial topic. We favor minimizing disturbance to and intervention in the Wilderness and conserving and restoring its whole native biota. Research Catalog | NYPL People are also invited to submit comments online. Current Status Seattle Times staff reporter Isabella Breda covers the environment. What Should the Future of the Pacific Northwest Trail Look Like? Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse, who represents rural central and eastern Washington communities, has opposed restoring grizzly populations in the past and indicated he would do so again. We are committed to grizzly bear recovery in Washington and plan to partner with the federal agencies and provide technical support to their initiative, WDFW Wildlife Program Director Eric Gardner said in a statement. According to a USFWS fact sheet, that designation would list the new population of grizzly bears as threatened and would give land managers wider latitude by relaxing certain rules designed to protect them. The Trump Administration is committed to being a good neighbor, and the people who live and work in north central Washington have made their voices clear that they do not want grizzly bears reintroduced into the North Cascades.