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A Future for Grizzlies When Lewis and Clark explored the Louisiana Territory almost 200 years ago, more than 100,000 grizzlies roamed the wild West. Today, fewer than 1,000 remain in the lower 48 states, restricted to less than 2 percent of their former range. America’s symbol of wildness, protected by the Endangered Species Act, can now be found only in and around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, and a few other isolated pockets of still-remote country. The Sierra Club’s Grizzly Bear Ecosystems Project has been working to restore the grizzly in the United States and adjacent ecosystems in Canada, and to ensure that future generations will have an opportunity to see the great bear in the wild. For more than ten years, the campaign has been cultivating public support and working to protect important habitat, ensure ecological connectedness between grizzly ecosystems, and reduce the number of human-bear conflicts. The campaign’s immediate priority is to prevent the bear from being tossed off the endangered species list. "Delisting" would weaken federal oversight and likely reestablish a legal hunt, dramatically setting back grizzly recovery. The federal grizzly-management program could make its final decision as early as 2003. Beyond that, the Club’s broad approach to grizzly recovery addresses the many threats to Ursus arctos habitat in Yellowstone and the northern Rockies, among them proposed oil and gas development on more than 5 million acres of public land in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and along the Rocky Mountain Front east of Glacier; escalating rural sprawl that is displacing bears and increasing grizzly mortality and conflicts with people; skyrocketing off-road-vehicle use on public lands; logging and its attendant roadbuilding; and a proposed mine that would, if built, sever the Cabinet Yaak Ecosystem in northwest Montana, essentially exterminating its remaining bears. To learn more about grizzlies, their habitat needs, and what you can do to help, go to the Ecosystems Project’s Web site at www.sierraclub.org/grizzly. Write or call Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, expressing your opposition to the premature removal of the Yellowstone grizzly’s ESA protections. Contact Norton at the U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C St. N.W., Washington, DC 20240; (202) 208-3100; gale_norton@ios.doi.gov. URSUS ARTIS |
