A Montana house resolution passed a final vote of the House this week in the state’s continued push to see the management of grizzly bears moved back to Montana’s wildlife agency.
Sponsored by Rep. Steve Gunderson, R-Libby, House Joint Resolution 15 cleared its first vote of the full House on Tuesday and final vote on Wednesday, both votes resulting in a 63-37 vote in favor of the proposed policy.
The resolution is now headed to the Senate for final approval, and if considered, would ask Congress to lift protections for grizzly bears within Montana and return the management of the animals back to the state level.
Gunderson believes that given increased sightings of bears as well as human conflicts, it is time to strategically manage the species rather than protect them.
“It’s time to manage this species,” Gunderson said. “It’s encroaching more and more into human areas.”
While having been under federal protection since 1975, grizzly bear populations, particularly in the Northern Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are believed to be sustainable. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC), which has been coordinating grizzly population recovery policy and research for over 30 years, estimates that roughly between 650 and 1,000 bears inhabit the Yellowstone area alone.
A year ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed the delisting of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which was followed up last fall with IGBC’s 2016 Conservation Strategy for the Grizzly Bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The plans both detailed strategic actions that would not only see the animals removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but also outlined the possibilities of future hunting seasons.
While facing opposition by many animal rights advocates, the unfortunate reality is that protections, such as those awarded to animals under the ESA, are not in place to protect certain species indefinitely.
The entire function of the ESA lies in its ability to allow protected species to rebound and recover. By keeping wildlife safely stowed beneath the umbrella of the ESA, we effectively undermine the virtue of the act itself.