Bearish on the Grizzlies

Conservationists debate how to save the great beasts

Before the white man came, the Indians venerated them as gods. Weighing as much 1,000 Ibs. and rearing up to 8 ft. on their hind legs, the great humpbacked beasts--among the largest carnivores in North America--can kill an elk or crumple the fender of a car with a swipe of a powerful paw. Still, for all its might, the grizzly, or more properly Ursus arctos horribilis (terrible northern bear), has become pathetically vulnerable.

In the early 1800s, when Lewis and Clark made their famous survey (and hesitated to send off scouts by themselves for fear they might accidentally disturb a bear), at least 50,000 grizzlies ranged from Texas to Oregon. Today, as a result of hunting, poaching and encroachment on their habitat, no more than 1,000 grizzlies, if that many, survive in the lower 48 states. One of the largest groups, probably no more than 200 bears, form an isolated, highly threatened band in and around Yellowstone National Park, where their survival has been the subject of a surprisingly ferocious argument among the very people who want to save them.

The long and complex battle traces back to the new environmental mood of the 1960s, when the National Park Service decreed that its holdings be kept as natural as possible and the animals be left to fend for themselves. Old dump sites, where the bears had long fed, were abruptly closed. Hotelkeepers were no longer allowed to put food out to attract bears for the amusement of guests. Well meant as it was, however, the new policy had unintended consequences. The bears began looking for food not only in campgrounds but outside the parks as well. They picked off sheep on nearby grazing land, prowled through mining and energy-exploration camps, and made scary appearances at new vacation homes on the outskirts of Yellowstone.

Inevitably, maulings and even deaths occurred immediately after the closures, as the bears, which are usually eager to avoid humans, increasingly encountered them. Yet more often than not, it is the animal that has been the victim. Says Lance Olsen, president of the Montana-based Great Bear Foundation: "The grizzly can get shot just for showing up."Many of the animals are falling to poachers, who seem to have no trouble illicitly selling grizzly skins for as much as $10,000 or grizzly paws for $3,000 a pair. Even when they are caught, the poachers usually get off by pleading they killed in self-defense.

To reduce the risk of aggressive, foraging bears running into trouble, the rangers regularly trap and tranquilize strays and carry them by helicopter to remote areas of the park. But some of the grizzlies, regarded by rangers as unusually intelligent animals, persist in heading back to their new feeding grounds and eventually must be shot.

Montana Wildlife Biologists John and Frank Craighead, perhaps the foremost authorities on the grizzly, insist that the answer is for the Park Service to drop its "forever wild" doctrine, at least as far as bears are concerned. In the early 1970s, at the height of their quarrel with the federal authorities, the 66-year-old twin brothers angrily quit their grizzly studies in Yellowstone. Says John: "It's fine to say that you want a pristine, pre-Columbian setting, but it won't work in Yellowstone [which had 2.4 million visitors last year]. Man is a definite part of the ecology and must be accommodated."

Though the Park Service refuses to reopen the old dumps, it is considering such tactics as leaving elk carcasses in grizzly territory not only to bolster the nutrition of the bears but to keep them from wandering off. The Government is also beefing up its patrols. One purpose is to keep an eye out for poachers. Another is to educate the flood of visitors expected again this summer, telling them of the dangers both to themselves and the bears from chance meetings. Says Chief Park Ranger Tom Hobbs: "The grizzly won't change his habits. We have to change ours." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.