Park Service doesn't want a hunting free-for-all if grizzlies are delisted/Randy Bjerke
National Park Service officials are supportive of plans to remove grizzly bears from Endangered Species list protections, but with a number of caveats. Among them are requests that the delisting plan both limits the chance that wounded bears venture back into parks and reduces the likelihood that "well-known or transboundary bears" are killed by hunters.
Bears, of course, don't know when they might leave Yellowstone or Grand Teton national parks and wander into one of the surrounding national forests. But if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service succeeds with its plans to remove grizzly bears, aka Ol' Ephraim, aka Ursus arctos horribilis, from ESA protection, officials in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana plan to be ready with hunting regulations for that day. And that could put any grizzly that leaves either of those parks in the crosshairs of a hunting rifle.
"The NPS continues to focus on supporting the delisting process while trying to ensure values of the NPS are considered in management strategies and actions. Grizzly bears are a premier wildlife attraction for visitors to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Parkway; and those visitors bring tens of millions of dollars into the regional economy," wrote Sue Masica, (letter attached below) who oversees the Park Service's Intermountain Region, in the agency's official comments to the delisting proposal. "The bears contribute to the public's enjoyment and sense of pride in our conservation heritage."
To see that those values aren't overturned, the Park Service asks that "future grizzly bear harvests within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem be conducted in a manner that: I) respects the NPS mission; 2) protects regional economic benefits and the enjoyment of bear watching; 3) reduces the risks associated with wounded bears entering NPS units; and 4) limits the likelihood that well-known or transboundary bears will be harvested."
Along those lines, Regional Director Masica specifically asked that the Rockefeller parkway officially be recognized as one of the three park units that could be impacted by the delisting decision and that it, as with Yellowstone and Grand Teton, be off-limits to hunters.
Biologically, the Park Service has asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to perform an analysis into how hunting impacts might affect the potential for connectivity between the GYE grizzly populations and those in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem that includes Glacier National Park in northern Montana. Additionally, the agency requested that if the grizzly population in the GYE falls below 600 individuals that hunting be stopped.
While the Fish and Wildlife Service intends to complete the delisting process by year's end, it likely won't go smoothly. Wyoming officials maintain that the enabling legislation for the John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Parkway allows hunting there, and so grizzlies that wander into the parkway would be fair game.
“My understanding is they can’t change that," Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Game and Fish Department chief game warden, told WyoFile last week.
Just the same, he added, Wyoming didn't push for wolf hunting in the parkway when that species was delisted, and so it is too early to say whether the state would try to open the parkway to grizzly hunts.
Lawsuits also could be in the mix. Like Yellowstone's wolves and bison, the park's grizzlies, and those in neighboring Grand Teton, are iconic and widely admired. The prospect of them ending up as trophy animals isn't easily accepted among those groups. That was evident in the uproar spurred by the recent news that Scarface, an iconic Yellowstone grizzly, had been killed by a hunter just north of the park's borders.
Too, there's the question some groups have voiced about whether the GYE grizzlies can survive hunting seasons.
"The historic comeback of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population is truly a remarkable achievement. But the current proposal threatens progress made to date. The Service is rushing to delist the grizzly bear before it knows how the Northern Rockies states and other federal agencies plan to manage it. It is unacceptable to proceed with delisting when the state and federal plans governing how this population will be managed are incomplete and therefore, unenforceable," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife and a former FWS director.
“Further, the Service’s current proposal doesn’t provide grizzlies with enough protections to ensure their long-term recovery. We can’t afford to be careless with this species. There is no need to rush this process, but that’s exactly what the Service appears to be doing.”
Comments
Sorry, Eric. This is where your "baseless" whine doesn't matter. BS is his opinion about your opinion. It ain't an uncommon opinion around here, and he doesn't have to justify a subjective impression. How can you dare to accuse others of fleeing? You act like teflon dodging everything thrown at you.
People on NPT are on to you, ec.
No Rick B, unlike you, Rick Smith & Lee, I haven't run from anything. You ask I question, I will answer. You ask for substantiation of a stated fact, I will provide it. You make baseless claims, I will point it out.
Well, ec, let's see. The vast majority of beef that graces your table does not come from ID., MT., or WY. Here are the stats from the beef industry:
Top 5 states for all cattle and calves (2015)
1. Texas - 11.7 million
2. Nebraska - 6.45 million
3. Kansas - 6.25 million
4. California - 5.2 million
5. Oklahoma - 4.85 million
Top 5 states for cattle in feedlots with capacity more than 1000 head (as of Jan 1, 2016)
1. Texas - 2.43 million
2. Nebraska - 2.20 million
3. Kansas - 2.09 million
4. Colorado - .870 million
5. Iowa - .620 million
Cattle have and do co-exist with grizzlies. Oh sure, a few get harvested every once in a while but no more than die of drought and disease.
So what Rick? The vast majority of grizzlies are not from ID, MT or WY either. In fact the cattle population of those states is as much if not a higher percentage of the total US population than grizzlies from those states are of theirs.
Am I for hunting grizzlies in a park, no. I don't even know that I would support hunting grizzlies at all. But I do support ranching on public lands because beef is a major staple of the American diet and allowing grazing on public lands helps lower the cost to the consumer and some would argue, is even benefcial to the land.
Fine. Charge them market value for the grazing instead of the meager rates that made the Bundy's feel so entitled.
I know our Esteemed Comrade, being a staunch conservative socialist, will simply ignore any attempt to document anything he might want to ignore, but for the more sensible readers here is some information that is easily found online:
HOW IMPORTANT ARE THESE WESTERN PUBLIC RANGELANDS IN TERMS OF OVERALL US BEEF PRODUCTION?
What percentage of US beef production relies, at least in part, on these western public rangelends? Well, this question is difficult to answer, in part because many western livestock owners use not only public but also private grazing lands, and because cattle spend various proportions of their feeding lives on the public lands. Suffice it to say, however, that the percentage is small (significantly less than 10%; probably between 2% and 4%). Consider the following:
It takes about 10 times more land to produce a given weight of cow in the western US than in East.
Nevada produces the same amount of meat from its public lands as tiny Vermont does overall.
Missouri produces more beef than Montana despite Montana's huge acreage devoted to livestock.
Basically, much degradation of western public rangelands has taken place for a small percentage of our beef production. (Recall that less than 7% of all western livestock producers actually use these western public lands, with their use dominated by a few big ranchers, who control about 74-78% of the forage.)
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/wpubland.htm
Or try this one:
w important are federal lands to national beef/livestock feed production?
Less than 3 percent of American beef is produced from federal public lands, while only 2 percent of total livestock feed is produced on federal lands.
That is found at http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/faq.htm#15
Here is an article from Oregon Public Radio that presents what appears to be a very carefully researched comparison of public vs private lands grazing costs. It states that even though ranchers pay a low fee, they also have other expenses if their permit requires that they shoulder costs of maintaining fences and watering faciltiies. (However, not all permits include those requirements.)
It also contains this statement:
Federal Grazing Fees Don't Pay For Agency Costs
Federal grazing fees were never designed to make the government money. But the current rates are low enough that the federal agencies who manage rangelands -- the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service -- recover roughly only one sixth of the cost of administering the grazing permits. That means taxpayers cover the rest.. . . . Still though, federal agencies are only getting a dollar and change per cow to graze. Does that even cover their costs?
That's where critiques of the system have some merit. The BLM isn't coming close to breaking even -- some calculations put the shortfall at about $120 million per year. And it's being made up by the U.S. taxpayers. That works out to each man, woman and child in the United States paying 38-cents per year so that privately owned cows can graze on public lands.
And this reliance on the taxpayer means the BLM has to rely on Congress to get funds - and arguably there's not enough for the grazing program to effectively monitors the range environmentally or make things run smoothly for the ranchers - thus there's a lot of tension there.
The above can be found at: http://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-...
If there are any "baseless claims" made in this thread, this one is an excellent candidate: " But I do support ranching on public lands because beef is a major staple of the American diet and allowing grazing on public lands helps lower the cost to the consumer and some would argue, is even benefcial to the land."
Here's a link to a PDF that states in part: It is doubtful that discontinuation of federal land grazing would have much impact on the price of meat to the consumer. Increases in beef production on private lands in the Great Plains and Southeast would likely compensate for any reduction on federal lands in the West. ( https://www.google.com/search?q=does+grazing+cattle+on+public+lands+redu... ) Note, too, the qualifier that "some would argue." Yep. Cliven Bundy is one who might make that argument.
Dadgum it! Aren't those little things called facts pesky unless one chooses to simply ignore them and hope they will go away?
"So what Rick? The vast majority of grizzlies are not from ID, MT or WY either. In fact the cattle population of those states is as much if not a higher percentage of the total US population than grizzlies from those states are of theirs." What? You talking about Alaska and Canada?