Yellowstone Grizzly Tragedies: What is Going On, What Can be Done?

There have been so many tragic deaths in the Yellowstone bear arena lately—of the human and ursine kind—that it has been hard to get my brain around it all.  To start with, a little more than a week ago, Kevin Kammer was pulled out of his tent in the Soda Butte Campground near Yellowstone Park and killed by a female grizzly.  Two others, Ronald Singer and Deb Freele, were injured by grizzlies in separate events in that campsite that same night.  The mother bear was killed by wildlife officials, and her three malnourished cubs now reside in the Billings zoo. 

On June 17th, the “Indiana Jones of Botany”, Erwin Evert, was killed by a bear less than two miles from his cabin—a bear that was coming out of immobilization drugs, after being trapped by researchers with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST).   

This year in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) 17 grizzly bears are known to have died — and that’s before hunting season begins, when more bears typically die in big game hunting-related conflicts.

Since the turn of the last century, when officials began to collect Yellowstone grizzly bear death and human conflict data, there has never been a year when two humans have been killed in one year.  Indeed, in the last century, only perhaps eight people total have been killed by grizzlies in the entire GYE.  And, according to Yellowstone Park records, between 1982 and 2002, when over 62 million visitors came to Yellowstone Park, only 32 people were injured by black and/or grizzly bears. This gives you a 1-1.9 million chance of being injured in a visit to Yellowstone. That is less than the chance of being hit by lightning.  

But for five humans (2 killed and 3 mauled) and several grizzlies this year, tragically, it seems lightning has struck more than once.   That is the nature of wild places. Indeed, its inherent lack of predictability, and its abundance of wild animals are some of the reasons that the public cares so much about protecting wilderness.

That is why it is especially important to be careful and prepared when it comes to the potential for close encounters of the grizzly kind. This challenge is getting greater, because this year, as in other recent years, more bears appear to be showing up in unusual places -- closer to towns and other areas where people are active. For example, reporter Cory Hatch of the Jackson Hole News and Guide reported last week of a bear right next to the Bridger Teton Forest office in the town limits of Jackson. 

This is the time of year when many grizzlies would normally be in remote areas away from people, feeding on army cutworm moths, or dining on the remains of last year’s whitebark pine seed crops, or on the new cone caches being made by red squirrels.  The squirrels help grizzlies by bringing cones down from the tops of whitebark pine trees and caching them in large hoards on the ground. Of course, any time of year when bears are active and human foods are available, bears can be drawn closer to people. 

So what’s actually going on here?

Predictions about increases in human-bear conflicts triggered by significant whitebark pine loss

The current situation recalled for me a prophetic quote from an Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) monograph of 2005: “should whitebark pine decline rapidly, we speculate that we would witness a scenario similar to what occurred when dumps were closed in Yellowstone National Park… more management problems, particularly outside the [Grizzly Bear] Recovery Zone, with a substantial increase in measurable bear mortality.” 

So what was the scenario that happened after the dumps closed in 1969 and 1970?  Answer: utter chaos in the bear/human world, with bears going into campgrounds, tents, towns, breaking into cabins and dying in large numbers—several hundred in a five year period—so many, if fact, the population was put on the federal endangered species list in 1975.

Can it be that we are seeing the IGBST’s 2005 predictions realized, now?  Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that Yellowstone’s whitebark pine forests have declined rapidly.  In less than a decade, 82% of these forests, which provide vital food for Yellowstone grizzly bears, have been adversely affected by a climate-driven outbreak of mountain pine beetle, according to a 2009 collaborative report by the US Forest Service and NRDC “Using Landscape Assessment System (LAS) to Assess Mountain Pine Beetle-Caused Mortality of Whitebark Pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” 

Questions about alternative foods and links to human conflicts and grizzly bear vital rates

Certainly Yellowstone bears have alternative natural foods in the absence of whitebark pine — and they are turning to them, each year, with increasing interest—as whitebark pine continues to decline.  But are these alternative foods of good enough quality in the late summer/fall season to support females that need to be in good condition to birth cubs in the dead and dark of winter, without eating, drinking or defecating?  And, where are these foods?  Closer to areas that people frequent?  Where more conflicts may happen? As well as possible incidents, such as those that happened last week?

The tragic July 28 event involving a female grizzly described as “slight,” but not starving, sounded eerily to me like 2008, when an unprecedented 5 females with young were killed during big game hunting-related incidents.  Are females, increasingly deprived of the formerly abundant and critical whitebark pine, willing to take ever more risks, taking on big game with hunters around, and indeed people themselves, so as to ensure a future for their offspring? 

 These questions deserve thorough explanation and honest answers.  Instead, the agencies have generally claimed that mounting human-bear conflicts are the result of having more bears, as a result of their successful management since grizzlies received federal protections. This is certainly the message you would have heard if you had attended, as I have, two decades worth of agency grizzly meetings, when the primary agenda was removing endangered species protections, seemingly without regard for anything else—an act accomplished in 2007, but reversed by a federal judge in 2009, in large measure due to threats to whitebark pine and potential adverse consequences of its loss to the Yellowstone grizzly bear population.  

But is there an ever-increasing number of grizzly bears — as agency officials claim — and if so, how many?  In 2009, IGBST Leader Chuck Schwartz reported the leveling off of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, which is somewhere around 500-600 – certainly a significant increase since the population was estimated to have hit rock bottom levels at around 200 animals in 1983. In a meeting last fall, Schwartz indicated that the “leveling” of population numbers may be related to the large number of grizzlies that died in the GYE during 2008. (A total of 79 grizzlies were estimated to have died including unreported dead bears that are counted as part of the mortality tally.)  Note: the IGBST report showing these findings has not yet been publically released. 

Using the body of evidence showing that whitebark pine drives the vital rates of the Yellowstone population, we could expect the population to be leveling off, if not declining.  Further, according to a 1995 paper by Dr. Dan Doak, “Source Sink Models and the Problems of Habitat Degradation: General Models and Applications to the Yellowstone Grizzly,” there will probably be a time lag between when foods are lost and the population responds.  This is especially likely given that the IGBST calculates population growth rate using retrospective data.

A perfect storm? Additional factors that could be exacerbating human-bear conflicts

To make matters worse, whitebark pine loss is not the only threat facing Yellowstone grizzly bears – females especially. We are also perhaps seeing the results of a concatenation of other factors, including: 1) the collapse of the cutthroat trout fishery in Yellowstone, which used to feed over 60 bears a year in early summer when other food sources are in short supply; 2) general unavailability of wolf-killed carrion to female grizzly bears because females are reluctant to put their cubs in harm’s way, given that male bears eat cubs, and males are also particularly attracted by meat; 3) an increasing number of hunter-related incidents during fall, probably because bears are seeking out elk and hunter-killed elk carrion to replace the lost whitebark pine seeds; and 4) more people moving into bear country.  (Supporting this last point, an August 2nd Discover article quoted Schwartz as saying , “we have people moving closer to bear habitat.  That could account for a slight increase in bear-human confrontation over the years.”) 

Could we be seeing all of these factors combining to create a “perfect storm” of bear-human conflicts—a storm that could further imperil this already threatened population, and possibly put people in danger as well? 

Agency response to the crisis: denial and spinning the science

Given the nature of the tragic events of the last few months, the silence among lead agency officials right now is deafening. Rather than initiating a dialogue with the public to try to figure out what is going on, and what some of the underlying dynamics of this challenging situation might be – so as to avoid similar events in the future – the leaders in management positions appear tongue-tied.

The only communication recently from bear managers is a press statement yesterday by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee attempting to make the case that whitebark pine does not matter to Yellowstone grizzly bears – the latest edition of their rhetoric of denial.  This press release is nothing more than playing politics with science, but under the guise of ostensible scientific authority. For example, the release emphasized the availability of alternative foods for grizzly bears – true enough – but carefully excluded any discussion of the scientifically well-established relationships between whitebark loss and bear conflict and mortality rates. (More on this complex matter of manipulation of science in an upcoming blog).

To be fair, it is likely that many of the officials who signed on the statement probably did not fully realize how information in it was selectively used to advance a political agenda, and may honestly be unconscious of how deeply the agenda of removing endangered species protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears has seeped into the pores of bear management. 

Every major peer-reviewed publication on the subject for the last two decades has clearly demonstrated that availability of whitebark pine seeds drives rates of human-bear conflicts and grizzly mortality. The public does not need more spin from agencies designed to excuse them from being accountable. What the public does need is a meaningful response from those with authority and resources to actually make things better on the ground for people and bears.

In the absence of real agency leadership and dialogue, the public is not averse to filling the vacuum.  Following are some excerpts from email comments in response to some of the recent news coverage.

• “You will pay for murdering that poor mother” read one e-mail posted to a Reuters News website, referring to a Montana wildlife official.
• “If you are fool enough to camp in a grizzly area in a tent, then so be it.  I think you would be a Kook.”
• “Maybe a tall, prison-style fence around the campground is in order.”
• “You’re in the bear’s home; of course he’s going to attack you.  If you swim in a shark’s home he’s going to attack you.  They’re simply protecting their homes.  If you enter my home uninvited I’m going to shoot you.  Let’s please not blame the bear.”
•  “I have eaten bear its good what did they do with the carcass dont let it go to waste”.
•  “As stated…this bear and many other have been habituated.  They don’t fear humans.  This is why a hunting season on grizzly bears would solve a lot of these encounters.”

What agency managers should hear from these messages is: 1) the public is deeply interested in this issue; and, 2) they are being called upon to be accountable leaders in a much-needed debate, not just bystanders.  [I want to qualify this statement, acknowledging the dedicated leadership of bear management folks on the ground, who are literally picking up the pieces when conflicts occur.]  But by continuing to sit on the sidelines, agency leaders are contributing to a climate where more human conflicts could occur. 

A reasonable approach and the role of good governance

 The Yellowstone Mortality report is a  compilation completed last year of some 31 recommendations for addressing human-bear conflicts.  However, little has been done by the agencies to prioritize the measures most likely to succeed, where and when. At last fall’s interagency grizzly bear meeting, one forest supervisor said that this document was not particularly useful in its current form, because managers need a prioritized list of actions to focus on.  She asked that measures with the greatest promise of reducing conflicts be identified.

This recommendation made sense. At the meeting I said that prioritization would also help the public and nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) like NRDC to make smart choices about where we put our resources to help reduce conflicts. (Most recently, we have been focusing on helping the community of Gardiner near Yellowstone Park with the purchase of bear-resistant dumpsters, and we have been engaged over many years in educational efforts targeting backcountry users and hunters prior to fall big game hunting season.)

I thought the public interest would be well served if there were a concentrated effort made during the winter months, when bears were sleeping, to boil down the laundry list of 31 possible actions, and make the document of greater practical use for everyone interested in reducing human-bear conflicts. The agencies have an abundance of information on past human-bear conflicts which could refine the analysis and clarify where and when more preventative actions might work best.

“Nothing to Talk About”

This spring’s Yellowstone interagency grizzly bear meeting was cancelled because “there was nothing to talk about”.  Huh?  Further exploration of ways to reduce human-bear conflicts is urgently needed if the public interest is to be served. Given all of the changes happening with bears, finding ways of keeping people and bears safe is the job of government. There was and is, now more than ever, a lot to talk about, not just recent unfortunate incidents, but also government responsibility and accountability.   And responsibility is not just about killing bears, which is often what agencies do in response to any perceived problem with wildlife.  Responsibility is about transparency and good faith in preventing problems from occurring in the first place, and about solving those that do occur in an equitable and open manner.

The Public Deserves Better

The events surrounding Erwin Evert, Kevin Kammer, Rob Steele and Deb Freele, and all the family members and bears caught in the crossfire put the issue of whether our public servants are responsibly and accountably serving the public interest squarely in the spotlight.   Real leadership and critical thinking are desperately needed to develop new, intelligent responses to managing an ecosystem that has lost key bear foods which had previously helped keep grizzly bears far from people. To address these challenges, we need a new open and transparent – dare I say democratic? – arena  to help the public think through what can be done to ensure a healthy future for the grizzly bear in Yellowstone, while keeping people and their families safe.  We all -- bears and people alike --deserve better.

Comments