YAKIMA — A decision on whether to bring grizzly bears back to the North Cascades won’t be made as soon as planned.
Efforts to restore the predators to their former habitat are on hold indefinitely, according to Jack Oelfke, the chief of natural and cultural resources at North Cascades National Park. Along with others, he’s waiting for additional instructions from the Department of Interior and the two lead agencies on the project, the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In January, the two groups released a proposal outlining three options for returning a sustainable population of the bears to their former habitat, with a final draft of the proposal set for this fall and an official decision expected by January. Under the proposal, bears from Montana and British Columbia would be brought here and released to live in 9,800-square miles of remote forests covering portions of seven counties stretching from the Canadian border south to Interstate 90.
A nearly four-month public comment period drew more than 126,000 pieces of correspondence, many of which included multiple substantive comments, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Ann Froschauer.
Hikers and environmental groups enthusiastically supported the idea, noting thousands of grizzlies once roamed the area and could offer an exciting attraction for visitors. But many residents and politicians, including U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, remain opposed to the idea because of concerns for safety as well as local agriculture.
“The federal government must defer to local communities that are most impacted by bear management efforts,” Newhouse said in a recent statement to the Yakima Herald-Republic. “When residents and stakeholders express opposition to proposals to reintroduce grizzly bears in the North Cascades Ecosystem, the federal government must listen.”
The proposal identified three alternatives with varied timelines for locating grizzlies into the area until they reach a population of approximately 200 bears. Biologists believe conservation efforts alone would not be enough to prevent bears from disappearing entirely from the North Cascades, if they haven’t already.
“There are no grizzly populations close enough to the North Cascades ecosystem to migrate in,” Oelfke said in an email. “The closest populations of grizzly bears to the north in British Columbia are all “threatened” and declining, and thus there is no internal pressure in those small populations to push outward and establish or re-establish in areas outside those populations.”
Conservation Northwest spokesman Chase Gunnell said the government’s inaction is frustrating, but the Seattle-based nonprofit plans to keep pushing to move the plan forward. In the meantime, Gunnell said they’ll also work with Canadian officials as they put new emphasis on grizzly bear recovery in light of an independent audit heavily critical of the province’s grizzly bear management.
That report, released in October, noted the Minister of Environment approved a North Cascades recovery plan in 2004 that would have located grizzlies to an area where only one has been seen since 2004. However, a new minister rejected the plan in 2006 and never publicly disclosed the decision, instead telling the public the North Cascades population would be “the highest conservation priority.”
