We saw many tracks of the white bear of enormous size along the river and shore.

And the men, as well as ourselves, are anxious to meet one of these Bear.

The Indians give a very formidable account of the strength and ferocity of this animal, which they never dared to attack but in parties of six, eight, or ten persons, and even then frequently defeated with the loss of one or more of their party, one of the party running towards us and making signs of hollering as if in distress, had shot a brown bear, which immediately turned on him and pursued him a considerable distance.

These bear being so hard to die, rather intimidates us all.

These white or grizzly bear have become so troublesome to us, that I do not think it prudent to send out one man alone on an errand of any kind, particularly when he has to pass through the brush.

The hand of Providence has been most wonderfully in favor of us with respect to these bear, where some of us would have long ago have fallen a sacrifice to their ferocity.

So back in 1804, when Lewis and Clark crossed this country, in this area that we're in today, they encountered dozens of grizzly bears across the landscape.

We believe that there may have been as many as 50,000 grizzly bears in the western half of North America in the 1850s, before Europeans really started to settle the West.

When the European Americans started to settle the West, they brought with them livestock and agriculture and mining and a lot of different activities that they just felt grizzly bears were incompatible with.

And so there really was generally an attitude of trying to eradicate them because they didn't think that they were compatible with the lifestyle that they wanted to live.

The main cause for grizzly bear decline during that time was that, just like many other large predators, they were being targeted for removal.

So by the early 1900s, the grizzly bear population had significantly decreased in the lower 48 states.

At the turn of the century, people's attitudes towards wildlife really began to change.

They started to appreciate having wildlife and understanding the value of having biodiversity on the landscape is really important for having a healthy, intact ecosystem.

They were realizing that bears and other wildlife weren't an infinite resource, and that they they could indeed eradicate species if they weren't protected.

There were many steps taken in the early 1900s to protect our wildlife resources and to bring up our wildlife populations.

It was the beginning of the Lacey Act.

The Fish and Game Agency started, and so they started regulatory mechanisms to control how many animals could be or couldn't be hunted, and also started taking a close look at habitat and trying to protect that habitat.

Your national park system started coming online and a lot of independent groups started up that combined with federal and state agencies coming online.

It was really the beginning of trying to reverse the effects that happened during the early 1800s and mid 1800s.

Yeah, the Lacey Act was put in place to control the trade of wildlife species so that wildlife couldn't be hunted to be sold in other states.

During the late 1800s, early 1900s and into modern day, the North American model for wildlife conservation was being developed, and at the very core, the principle is that the wildlife is held in public trust instead of being owned by a monarch.

So even early on, when actions were taken to protect fish and wildlife populations, some populations were still struggling and even on the brink of extinction.

This led to the Endangered Species Act being adopted in 1973.

The Endangered Species Act works to protect plants and animals that are threatened or endangered by working to conserve the species, and also protect its habitat.

The Endangered Species Act is meant to be a stepwise process.

It is meant to take a hard look at a species, determine if or when it needs additional protections, then provide that species those protections.

During that process, the Fish and Wildlife Service works with partners, state agencies to determine the recovery criteria that must be met in order to declare recovery and remove that animal from the list and turn it back over to state management.

ESA also comes with a failsafe at the end of it.

It's an agreement between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the state agencies to monitor that population, to ensure that success remains into the future.

So there were two main reasons grizzly bears were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

One was having to do with them dying from interacting with people, so that could be in the form of getting into conflicts with people.

These were back in the days when we fed bears at garbage dumps.

And so there there were too many bears dying.

And then there was a loss of habitat.

Yellowstone was a place where people went to view all sorts of wildlife, including bears, and they were fed constantly by people.

There was no prohibition towards that.

The dumps in Yellowstone, they were just open pit dumps.

And along with just public feeding, wildlife and bears, they realized that was a bad thing.

And so they closed down the dumps and all these bears that were that were used to this food resource, they were both habituated and food conditioned, and they became serious threats for a lot of human injuries, many human deaths, a lot of property damage, and a lot of bears were killed as a result of that.

Well, they killed so many bears, they realized, because all this human activity, this population is now threatened.

And so they were put on the endangered species list, I believe, in 1975 or 76.

When the bears were listed in in 1975 under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species.

The population size was maybe 800 bears in the whole lower 48, and their range had been reduced to about 2% of what the range was back in historic times, and the places that they still existed were places that were protected because they were either national parks or they were very large, remote areas that bears could still exist in.

The Endangered Species Act essentially creates a plan for recovery of a species that is threatened or endangered.

The U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service is in charge of the recovery program, but within that, there are many different people and agencies that are working towards recovery.

So that could be the Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, in our case, tribal governments and others as well.

So it's a network of agencies that are working together to recover the species.

The parameters put in place to recover the grizzly bear population under the ESA said, okay, we need to identify a population, in this case the Yellowstone grizzly bear population, and we need to put communities and people in place, which in our case is inter agency Grizzly Bear Study Team and the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee basically incorporates all the states, including Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming to all get together.

And they outlined a recovery plan that was written for the grizzly bear.

And it outlined population parameters, monitoring requirements to ensure that the population is one recovered past this brink of extinction.

And secondly, that any threats that caused that population to become in peril in the first place no longer exist.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has ultimate jurisdiction over the management of the grizzly bear in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, but every individual landowner, producer anybody has a garbage can that lives in grizzly bear country, runs livestock, the Forest Service, the BLM, all the land management agencies involved.

But in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Wyoming Game of Fish Department has been the major player in the recovery of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

Everybody is responsible for the recovery of the grizzly bear, and that includes not only agencies but the public, because in order for grizzly bears to exist on the landscape long term, everybody has to play a role in that.

And that comes with tolerance.

And tolerance is everything when it comes to recovering any species, specifically animals that are big and cover ground.

And so, yeah, I'd say everybody is responsible for it.

In order for grizzly bears to be recovered in each of the ecosystems where they are listed, there are different recovery goals.

So the goals differ from one ecosystem to another, but they have to do with the size of the population, reproduction and the presence of the animals on the landscape.

There are six grizzly bear recovery zones in the lower 48 states.

They are the Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide, Bitterroot, North Cascades, Selkirk and Cabinet.

Yaak ecosystems.

Of those ecosystems, grizzly bears have fully recovered in the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems.

They are still working towards recovery in the Selkirk and Cabinet Yaak ecosystems, and there are currently no grizzly bear populations in the North Cascades or bitterroot ecosystems.

The recovery plan set aside certain criteria to recover grizzly bears.

The easy way to describe it is a minimum population of bears reproducing females across the entire recovery zone, and then reducing human cause mortality.

That's the basic criteria for the recovery plan.

I think in many ways, the primary factor that we had to overcome to recover grizzly bear populations is to limit the amount of human caused mortality.

And the ways that we went about trying to do that included both habitat protection and population protection.

We protected habitat by reducing human access into some of the areas, because where we have high road densities, you tend to see lower bear survival, and that can reduce their chances for long term persistence.

We put in food storage orders on public lands all over to make sure that people were keeping their attractants away from bears and reducing that kind of conflict.

And then, of course, more recently, as the bears have expanded into more human areas, we are really doing conflict prevention and conflict response to try to reduce human caused mortality from that as well.

So it has been said that wildlife managers spend a lot more time managing human wildlife conflicts than actually managing the populations of the animals.

And that is so true.

Whether it's elk, urban deer or grizzly bears, you you work so hard at minimizing conflict instead of being proactive and trying to actually manage the long term coexistence of people and bears we're so reactive to managing conflicts, and we spent an inordinate amount of time doing that.

We'll never be completely rid of human bear conflicts, because the place where humans and wildlife intersect has grown.

So there's just more need than ever to provide education and information about living with wildlife, and about bears and tools we are using to reduce conflict are definitely information, education, and outreach, helping distribute tools and resources like bear spray, teaching people how to use bear spray, showing people how to use electric fencing, and providing technical support there.

Also bear resistant containers are a huge part of conflict reduction work, so all of those things together contribute greatly to the reduction of human bear conflicts.

But we don't carry that burden alone.

We also rely on the public and other nonprofit organizations.

It's up to all of us collectively and it's something that can't be forced.

It has to come from the individuals.

It has to come from the communities for it to be successful.

So we're all in it together.

The Tribal Wildlife Management Program fills the role of mediator between people and grizzly bears.

They were here before us on the landscape and so we as tribal people, act as stewards for wildlife.

And we do live in a very different world today, working with the people that live on the landscape, the residents of the mission Valley of the Flathead Indian Reservation.

We really work to get ahead of conflict and try to kill the conflict and not the carnivores.

We also consult with landowners that have attractives such as chickens, goats, small livestock, pigs, llamas, or orchards.

I mean, I understand both perspectives, the the conflict issue.

You know, I understand why a landowner may not want to have an electric fence in their backyard where their children are running around.

But I also know through research that, you know, you're essentially flipping a coin every night in the Mission Valley as to whether or not your chicken coop or small livestock gets attacked by a grizzly bear.

And so I understand the importance of using these preventative tools.

But I also understand that there are real world reasons to not want to have some of these mitigation measures on your property.

So there's some basic tenets about living in bear country and reducing conflicts has to do with assuming first that bears could be anywhere.

So some ways we can reduce conflicts with bears out recreating are to make a lot of noise when you're on the trail yelling to let them know you're coming so that they don't get surprised.

Being in groups of other people will also help reduce conflict, because the bears will hear you coming and avoid conflict typically.

So those two things are huge just by themselves.

Avoid carcasses of large animals, avoid dawn and dusk, and for hunters, proper game storage.

So getting your animal out of the the woods as quickly as possible, having a plan and then no matter who you are, is really important to carry bear spray and know how to use it so that if you do have a bear encounter, you can stop it or you can change the bears behavior.

It's very effective.

About 92% effective at changing behavior.

98% of people who use it are not harmed by the bear.

I was working as a grizzly bear technician up in Libby, Montana, and I was by myself.

I was up in the cabinet mountains, and it was the middle of May.

I was collecting hair off of barbed wires, and bears do a lot of rubbing.

So they'll come along and they'll rub on the corral.

And that collects the hair for DNA, just like people try to build that, you know, family tree and see who's connected.

I was making a ton of noise.

I was clapping my hands.

I had a pack on, and I had bear spray right here on my chest.

And I got into this semi-open avalanche chute, and all of a sudden I heard a grunt and I turned to my left and they measured it.

He was about 11 or 12ft for me, literally on my left side.

I immediately knew he was a grizzly bear.

I just turned to the right.

I dropped down to the ground.

I was in that fetal position, the legs to the side on my butt.

He had already got on me.

He was on my back.

He had caught up my arm caught up my back.

His entire body was on top of me, and I was just hunched over, just slowly trying to work out that bear spray.

And I got it out.

I took off the cap and he reached down.

He bit down on my skull and I reached over and sprayed him with the bear spray, and he took off.

It was very much a defensive mechanism, so he did not know what I was.

He was very focused.

So it turns out that he was digging up glacier lily bulbs.

He was flipping over rocks.

He was very focused.

And bears do that when they're hungry, they get focused and they're just zoning in.

So they're not always listening.

That's why it's so important to make a lot of noise.

And so his encounter with me was very much defensive.

He just he was defending his area.

Typically all bears will run away, but if you get close enough you surprise them, like I did with the bear that I encountered or you have a female with cubs.

Or if they're guarding a food source, that's when those defensive mechanisms really kick in.

Folks have been left charged too, right?

That's another defensive mechanism.

So that's giving you another warning that says, hey, you got to back off.

So we really try to get folks to focus on behavior and to read that bear and what that bears doing, because not every situation is going to be like mine either.

You could surprise a bear from 100 yards away.

You could surprise them from right there.

I mean, they could see you and just bolt off and not do any warning, right?

So we really try to educate and focus, like I said, on that behavior and having us read their behavior and where they're at.

There's definitely things that I encourage folks to do right.

And that's practicing with bear spray.

And definitely knowing how to use it.

Your goal is to hit that bear in the face, hit him at the feet, it builds up a cloud.

And then lastly is to carry two cans of bear spray.

I hiked myself out so I had an in reach with me.

I hit the SOS button, but I didn't know how long it was going to be and I had nothing.

I barely had anything in my can, and so just having that extra can would have been super, super nice.

I mean, I made it back to my truck, but I'm still here.

But.

The biggest takeaway would be that bear spray works.

Bear spray is it's a great tool to use.

It really saved my life.

And while it doesn't sound like it, you know, he cracked open three quarters of my skull and I mean, the minute I sprayed him, he was gone and that whole interaction was done.

You know, I lost all my hearing in my left ear.

So when he bit down on my skull and cracked it open, it was immediately was ringing and it was gone when I came out of the hospital.

Yeah, I was mad because I was six months.

I had to be, I couldn't work, they had to shave my head, you know, I lost all my hair, which was super upsetting.

And of course, after I, you know, I went from hiking like crazy to doing nothing, I could barely make it up my own driveway.

And so that was very tough for me.

I mean, numbers wise, grizzly bears killing cattle in the state of Wyoming.

That's our biggest conflict.

It's more than just grizzly bear killing a cow up on public land.

There's a lot more to it.

Well, ranching in today's world is tough anyways, on any level.

And when you add in an apex predator like the grizzly bear, it makes it even more tough.

A big grizzly bear in this country, you know is 4 to 500 pounds.

A 600 pound bear is huge, and they can take down a 12 1,500 pound cow.

They're nothing to be messed with or taken lightly.

They're a formidable force.

When I do lose cows and calves, to bears, we have our range riders that are up there.

They get a call into the game and fish predator guy, and then he comes up and looks at it.

And.

And if he does confirm it as a bear kill.

We are in the state of Wyoming, where it's state statute that the Wyoming game and fish does pay us back for any losses due to trophy game animals.

Yeah.

Verified losses to grizzly bears this year was up.

It was kind of a record year, not necessarily a record we want to go for, but we had, 91 confirmed grizzly bear kills in our allotment alone.

And three wolf kills confirmed.

In a typical year.

We end the season with around 80 confirmed bear kills.

By grazing up there I'm going to come home at least 10% of my calf crop gone.

So the losses are way beyond just financial and physical losses.

It's a financially unstable situation.

So I've seen a change in the grizzly bear numbers just in the 15 years I've been here.

I used to see one bear a year, and then it's gradually gotten to where I was up there this summer, every other week or so, or if not every week, and we always either found a kill or saw a bear, except for three trips.

Grizzly bear has been listed since 1975.

The grizzly bear, generationally, has lost all fear of man whatsoever and respect of man.

Because of that, we have sals with Cubs that are on their third, fourth generation, fifth generation that have been raising Beefeaters.

We've had sheep herders get attacked by bears, grizzly bears.

And, so you don't ever go up there completely calm.

You're literally are just bear aware every time you're up there and all the time you're up there and you either have your bear spray or your pistol on you at all times.

We just need to get the bear down to manageable numbers by example, when the when the wolf got unlisted in the state of Wyoming took over management of the wolf, we saw our wolf depredation numbers dropped drastically and the wolves are still there.

We're ranching with the wolves up there, but we've got them at a manageable level.

I think if the state of Wyoming can take over management of the bear and get the numbers where they belong, we can all live more successfully with the bear.

The conservation of a species is completely different than the preservation of a species.

You know, it's kind of cool still, to see the grizzly bear in its natural system.

Me personally, and most of us within the association don't want the bear gone.

We just want the bear managed.

There is no better lifestyle in my mind than ranching.

But on the same token, you feel a little bit of despair and distrust because, Yeah, it's not an easy situation to be up there feeding them to the bears.

You know, livestock producers that I deal with in Wyoming are fantastic.

They're just good, hard working folks and making a living.

They take good care of the land because they rely on it, you know, for their future.

These folks also own a huge chunk of land, and it produces and sustains all kinds of wildlife, everything from trumpeter swans to bald eagles to Wyoming toads and other endangered species and other harvestable renewable resources like antelope, deer and elk and the fisheries resource.

And they provide a lot of public access, whether it's fishing, hunting or other sorts of recreation on their private land.

That's mostly what we're paying for that the public gets to enjoy.

What is that worth?

I don't know if you can put a price tag on that.

So you're not just paying for their loss of their calf to a grizzly bear, you're paying for them to continue to run their business and own this land to sustain all that wildlife into perpetuity.

For wildlife in general, a good compensation program is is necessary.

It's a good thing to do.

It's good.

It's good for everybody, not just the producers.

In conjunction with that, you know, a few bears, and they've become a chronic depredation to livestock.

We remove them from the population is a removal of a few select individuals worth the preservation and the long term tolerance of grizzly bears and all wildlife into the future.

So that's the bigger picture with livestock depredation.

It seems like we used to call the mountains here the high country.

And a lot more people are now calling it grizzly country.

Anything that has to do with recreating in the backcountry or even the front country nowadays, you've got to be bear aware.

Grizzly bears have changed the way that we outfit and guide from when I first started, which is 1985, we really didn't worry about Grizzlies.

We knew they were there, but they were not nearly as prevalent as they are today.

One of the things I wish folks would understand about working and and living in grizzly bear habitat is every single bear you see is not automatically dangerous.

I think that that has been a grave injustice to the bear is they've gotten this, this image of being immediately dangerous.

Yes, they can be, but not every single one is.

And I think there are probably some bears that have been killed because of the way people think, and that is come from this hype that every single bear, the second they see is going to rip your head off.

But when you have a serious encounter with a bear, either you're going to scare them or you're taking something away that they think is theirs.

The scaring part, you just pay attention, make noise, have a partner.

They're taking away something they think is theirs, is why we try and get our animals off the mountain as soon as possible, so we don't give them an opportunity to claim it.

But as far as that goes, I mean, 99% of them don't want anything to do with you.

Hey bear, hey bear, hey bear, get.

And if people would understand that, I think you'd see a lot less situations escalate into a conflict situation.

One of the biggest detriments to the recovery of the bear has been the misinformation that has been put out there by the wildlife activist groups.

They're some of those groups that I feel that have hijacked the Endangered Species Act to their own gain.

They put out the word the grizzly bears on the brink of extinction.

And if we allow one of them to be killed, we're going to be tipping it over and and they spread that word to the misinformed majority.

And I don't think grizzly bears should be managed politically.

I don't think they should be managed from the bench.

Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, they all have super great wildlife managers and we need to let them do their job.

The reason that we have the populations we have in these states is because of state management.

We've got a population that is succeeding.

We've got a population exceeding where they can live comfortably.

And so they're being pushed out into places where they really shouldn't be.

When my second child was just starting school, they put a bear fence around the playground.

Should we have to worry when our kids walk to school?

Should we have to worry when we go out in the morning to feed the chickens?

When you start having to worry about what you do in your own backyard, something's got to change.

It's not the bear's fault.

They're in the situation they're in.

It's the mismanagement that has been going on for years.

But I think in the in the back country where they belong, they are a cool part of the ecosystem.

Grizzly bear recovery has been a conservation success because the populations of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone and Northern Continental divide populations are doing really well, and the recovery goals have been met for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for quite some time.

Once we've worked to reduce threats to bears and help their population grow, how do we know they are recovered?

There are specific criteria, like having an even distribution of females with cubs across the recovery zone, but the real evidence is continued population growth, continued expansion, and evidence for population growth has slowed, and bears are competing more with one another as our density reaches the upper limit.

Simply put, there is a limit to how many bears might fit in these core areas and we are reaching it.

The Grizzly Bear recovery has been a conservation success story, and I believe that that story happened a decade ago.

I believe that the numbers have rebounded to the point that you have a sustainable population that can be managed by state agencies into the future, and also the amount of range expansion that has occurred with the grizzly bears.

You know, you see bears now where 20 years ago, they never thought they'd see bears.

With that amount of range expansion, the core population has to be doing well to provide these dispersing individuals that move into these areas where truly, I don't believe many people thought they would be seeing bears.

My parents bought a, small ranch a mile and a half two miles from the Glacier Park border.

And to my knowledge, up until 20 years ago, I never, ever saw a grizzly bear on that property.

I don't ever see them going back the way they were when I was a kid, where they were just back in the mountains because my son was up there riding just west of there yesterday and saw three grizzlies.

They're omnivores, so they like grain, they like alfalfa, they like carcasses.

They like everything.

And there's lots of it.

So one of the biggest reasons bears cause problems, around people is because there's food.

Having a cattle operation is you're going to have some natural death loss of your animals, either from old age or sickness or pregnancies that didn't go right.

There's always just going to be death loss, in a cattle herd.

And so traditionally, ranchers just throw all those dead animals in a pit on a remote part of their ranch.

And but the problem with grizzly is expanding back out is those bears are then attracted to those bone pits where all these dead animals are.

And when they start concentrating on these dead animals, then that gives them a chance to come around.

Humans their homes, or they start running into live animals, which they then can attack and kill.

And so we're heading out right now to clean up a bone pit, and that will help prevent bears from being drawn in close to people and livestock.

These bone pits, where people have been hauling carcasses for decades and decades, and it hasn't been a problem because there was no grizzly bears.

Right.

But now that the grizzly bears are expanding out as an unintended consequence of successful recovery, then it's becoming an issue because bears are being drawn near houses, being drawn to coming up from the river.

Exactly.

And you can see some houses right there.

It's got a caused them some problems.

Sure does.

These folks here had, 40 chickens killed by a bear this year.

And that bear was probably just passing through to come to the dining buffet here.

And then oh!

Yeah.

Success always come to the challenges.

And managing grizzly bears is no exception.

When you have a tremendous abundance of grizzly bears, for example, when you have 12 grizzly bears in one small cornfield 50 miles outside of the recovery zone for grizzly bears, that's a problem.

That's an issue that it's obviously successful recovery, but that is challenges that we have to face on a daily basis now.

There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the grizzly bears biologically recovered.

We've met all the recovery goals set forth and exceeded those recovery goals for over 20 years.

Every scientist in the world knows without a doubt that the grizzly bear population in the Yellowstone ecosystem is recovered.

The only reason they're not recovered is on paper because of lawsuits.

And it's contrary to what the purpose of the Endangered Species Act was to help states and jurisdictions recover a species to a healthy point where they can then be managed by the states.

And we're there.

But unfortunately, now some folks are using the Endangered Species Act as a legal crux to fight de-listing species that, again, are biologically recovered.

If people would understand the reasoning behind our management decisions, become educated in why we're doing what we're doing, then we'd all be better off.

We're the experts, but a lot of folks are resistant to hear from an expert.

So if you want to know about bears and wildlife management, there's a whole host of experts across the West that have been managing these bears, studying them for years.

And that's the information that we're trying to convey to folks.

So education is the key to getting that information out.

So they better understand why we're making the management decisions that we are.

So I wish people would understand how much time and effort it takes to manage grizzly bears.

It is no easy thing.

And we have a lot of staff dedicated to doing that.

It's not fortune and glory as much as people think.

We spend a lot of time in the dirt dealing with day to day conflicts and doing preventative measures and all that, and it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every single year.

The reality of managing grizzly bears is quite different than, than the movie version.

A lot of the common misconceptions is that there's some vacuum that we operate in, that we do everything and nobody knows what we're doing.

Everybody knows what we're doing.

We work with all agencies at the same time, whether it's the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the BLM, the Forest Service, our own state agencies, other state agencies, we're constantly in contact also the public.

And what we do in regards to grizzly bear management, not only from a preventative standpoint, but also from a management standpoint as well.

Our jobs as grizzly bear managers, we have to balance grizzly bear existence on the landscape with human existence on the landscape.

Our number one priority is human safety while also maintaining for a viable population of grizzly bears.

The truth is, is that, you know, the grizzly bears were recovered in 2003.

They've been delisted twice in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

Bears are populating new areas.

Bears are moving out into new areas that, where folks aren't necessarily used to having specifically grizzly bears.

And so here are some things you can do to work towards coexisting with bears if they do show up in that area.

And that's everything from securing attractants to livestock practices to how to recreate in bear country.

And the States worked really hard on promoting that information and education.

If we're not actively dealing with a grizzly conflict, the rest of our time is spent promoting how to be preventative and how to coexist with grizzly bears.

And also what are the dangers and lookout situations that people should be aware of so that they do call us ahead of time instead of sometimes when it's too late.

So social tolerance is just the number of animals that people find acceptable or tolerable in a particular area.

Social tolerance can vary wildly and in ways you might not expect, depending on the community that you're speaking about and their livelihoods.

There is a survey done in Montana of people's attitudes about grizzly bears, and almost everyone in the survey, which was representative of the state, believes that grizzly bears were an important part of Montana's natural heritage.

And so most people believe grizzly bears belong here.

But their feelings vary depending on how close they live to grizzly bears.

Most people don't want them in their literal backyards, but most people agree on the value that grizzly bears have should be allowed to live here.

So social tolerance of grizzly bears, based on the number of animals that they see in a given area, is really unique.

It depends on your perspective.

Those folks that want to view and photograph and enjoy grizzly bears, they want to see them all the time and if they don't, they believe that there's a failure in the system and there's not enough grizzly bears.

But then there's folks that are out there recreating.

They're out there fishing, hiking, hunting.

They don't want to be bumping into grizzly bears all the time.

They don't.

And if they see more than one, there's too many.

So it's a wide perspective.

And the problem with grizzly bear management, it's not just about grizzly bears.

No matter how they feel about grizzly bears, I think it's very safe to say people are unhappy with the government one side or the other.

And so whether there's too many or not enough grizzly bears, it's just another reason to be angry with the government and criticize them.

So it's never just about grizzly bears it.

There's a much bigger picture, black bears, grizzly bears.

They don't always work and play well with others.

They can be a difficult species to coexist with people.

That's not to say that they're not willing to live in and amongst us.

Because bears are truly opportunistic omnivores, they will take advantage of any food source.

And it's the reason they can be so successful, even in human dominated landscapes.

But the opposite might not be true.

Predators are subject to a social carrying capacity much more so than our ungulate species.

And that's certainly more true with grizzly bears than than any other predator.

When the cost associated with them living up close and personal in your neighborhood or community gets to be too high, then they don't enjoy that same social carrying capacity.

That's a pretty big fur ball to try to shove down people's throats.

There's only going to be the number of predators on the landscape that the locals are going to tolerate, but that doesn't mean that every homeowner, every tourists, every photographer gets to see a grizzly bear when they visit those three states because they're elusive predators.

You shouldn't see them all the time.

That's one of the biggest challenges that we see today, the reaching of the balance between two diverse groups that want more and more and more, the other wanting.

Wait a minute, maybe we have enough.

And striking that balance has been really the challenge their back on the landscape to a certain extent due to regulatory measures.

But those regulatory measures can only take it so far.

You know, the recovery criteria for the grizzly bear changed over time, which can make it difficult to meet that recovery criteria.

The initial recovery criteria was met over a decade ago.

The state agencies were ready to declare it a victory.

I think even the Fish and Wildlife Service was ready to declare a victory.

But due to several different lawsuits that came about in the past ten years, that goalpost ended up changing and they removed them from the list, and then they placed them back on the list.

I think it's impossible to talk about the grizzly bears recovery process and all of the things that happened without acknowledging the role that anti hunters have played in it, meaning they just bring additional lawsuits to keep them listed under federal protections.

But the real problem in my mind is, is the vulnerability of the process and the ability of outside forces to sue to get what they want out of the process.

And you have a situation like you have now, meaning litigation after litigation after litigation has moved that goalpost and moved it down the road to the point where I believe you create a situation where nobody trust the process anymore, then the process breaks down and the Endangered Species Act can then not work the way it was intended.

The grizzly bears are doing just fine, but it's managing the people.

The people are putting up so many roadblocks towards progressive, positive, common sense grizzly bear management that's really difficult to overcome.

So the biggest challenges with managing grizzly bears right now is the false perceptions surrounding grizzly bears, whether that be from people on the ground all the way to big decision makers, whether it be within the Fish and Wildlife Service or a federal judge, the amount of misinformation and how the public is negatively influencing the decision makers because of either fear mongering on one way or the other, either kill them all or love them all, neither of which is good for wildlife management.

That's the challenge.

Is again, finding that middle ground.

There's no perfect system, but the biggest challenge is finding that middle ground where, yeah, that makes common logical sense.

It's a good way to move forward that's gone anymore.

It's very difficult to find that in a mixed group of folks.

Again, we have these huge differing opinions and perceptions on grizzly bears, but I think the overall whelming common ground is that people love grizzly bears.

They're cool.

I mean, even all the ranchers that I speak with that are losing cattle and their livelihood to grizzly bears.

They don't hate grizzly bears.

They see one and they're they're in awe.

It's cool.

They're a majestic, beautiful critter.

And we want to see them forever.

We want future generations to enjoy them.

So there's lots of means to that end.

But I think that's the common ground.

It's just the fact that grizzly bears are a beautiful, magnificent creature and nobody wants to see them go away.

And I firmly believe that the grizzly bear will be removed from the endangered species list in the not too distant future, and then the long term survival of the grizzly bear will be square in the management court of the different state agencies, which is where it should be, and I believe that they are accomplished enough.

Concerned enough, and conservative enough that you will have grizzly bears into the long term and short term future.

We all know that there is a place on this planet for grizzly bears, and in despite our different perspectives of how that might look, depending on where we live and where the bears are and our livelihoods, the fact that we're there debating this, the fact that we have passionate discussions and we continue to discuss and think about what this future looks like, is a healthy sign that people are engaged and care about the future of grizzly bears, and that gives me hope in our future.

As a species and for their species as well.

So I think the future of of grizzly bears from a grizzly bear perspective is great.

They're going to do just fine.

They've proven how adaptable they are, and they're recovered by all sense of the word, except for on paper.

The future of grizzly bear management is they're going to be around for a long time for as many generations as we can count.

Even if people screw it up again, they're going to do just fine because they're the critter that they are.

So one thing I wish people would understand about bear management is we're not out to make everybody happy.

We're out to manage the population long term.

And sometimes that means killing bears, which people don't like.

And sometimes it means not killing bears, which sometimes people don't like.

So we try to do what's best for the population as a whole.

Taken into account, of course, human safety trumps things if a bear needs removal for that, but we're not going to remove them just at every drop of the hat either.

There's that middle ground that makes common sense, that fits the numbers, meets recovery goals.

Long term management of a bear population requires both of those things to occur.

And just because it's not somebody's personal desire, what the ultimate outcome of of a bear management strategy is doesn't mean that the whole system's flawed.

How many bears are enough?

The reality is that it is inappropriate to think that you can have bear range expansion occurring in perpetuity.

They don't belong everywhere.

They can't thrive everywhere.

And it's unfair to the local populations of people to expect that.

And it's unfair to the bear population to expect that you can't have bear range expansion into what they were pre settlement because it was pre settlement.

Humans didn't dominate the landscape like they do now.

Grizzly bears are just one of those species that are that are truly meant to live remotely.

They're truly meant to live in wilderness areas.

And it's extremely difficult to expect the bear population and the the locals to live in close proximity to each other.

Bears are always going to behave like bears.

Humans are always going to behave like humans and do expect them to 100% coexist.

I think is setting the table for disaster.

Suitable habitat or unsuitable habitat from a grizzly bear perspective, there's probably very few areas that are biologically unsuitable because, again, they can adapt, they can find food resources, they can make it work is what makes an area unsuitable habitat is the fact that a lot of those areas that they used to occupy are now occupied by humans, and they're used by humans for livestock production, housing development and different things.

And where bears and people coexist, they will come into conflict.

That's a fact.

And so we have a tremendous, abundant, huge area where grizzly bears can live a wild, free life, but trying to force them into areas and think there's going to be some long term peaceful coexistence between people and bears is completely unrealistic.

We have too many people on this planet now, and that's what's going on, and that's not going to change.

And so that's what makes habitat unsuitable for bears is because it's currently filled with people.

The future challenge for managing grizzly bears and maybe even bears as a whole, is the personal philosophy out there that they shouldn't be hunted.

Management is part of taking care of and being good stewards of wildlife.

Hunting those populations so that they stay within population goals and objectives is part of that management.

And so it really comes down to simply being anti hunters versus people who believe hunting is part of management.

And I don't know how to get those two groups together.

I believe hunting to be a crucial component to wildlife management, including grizzly bears.

Managing grizzly bears comes with a lot of challenges, and they come from the fact that this species evokes such passion from people.

It's physical presence.

Sometimes as, as a species, they can be hard to live around.

Though it's possible.

But also the species evokes fear and reverence and passion and all of those things make it hard to to manage them on the ground.

So it evokes a lot of emotion and understandably so.

But I think knowledge is the antidote to fear, and the more people can understand all of the different parts of grizzly bear management, the better we can make decisions about how we want to see wildlife management done for generations to come.

I really think in managing grizzly bears in in all wildlife, species and natural resources, I think an important factor is for us to understand that we are part of the environment, that we are not separate from it.

We oftentimes want to act like we are not part of the natural environment, but we really are.

And I think the more we embrace the environment that we live in and act as a part of it, the better chances we have of continuing to maintain the biodiversity that we have.

Education is the best thing we can do, but it's the hardest to measure.

You know how many folks do we actually reach and how many listen?

And, it's it's really difficult, but it's it's some of the greatest stuff we do.

And that's why we spend so much time and effort on it.

There's a lot of uneducated folks out there when it comes to grizzly bears.

I want folks to take the time, learn from the experts, do some research, get the facts before you form your solid opinion about grizzly bears.