GRIZZLY
FUTURE
bear off of the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to issue
its final ruling on the status of the
bears in the coming weeks. Successfully bringing the bears back
from the brink of extinction would
be a huge victory for the agency
and for the Endangered Species
Act, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in late December.
Yet some environmentalists and
scientists like Logan and Macfarlane believe the grizzly bears are
still in peril, because the whitebark is in peril. They argue that
the government has failed to ac-
HUFFINGTON
02.23.14
knowledge the true role that climate change is playing in the pine
beetle infestation. High up in the
alpine wilderness, they say, a crisis is unfolding — the denial of
which is a stark example of the
government’s refusal to take the
effects of climate change seriously.
“You have a bureaucracy that
changes slowly, and you have an
ecology that is being compressed
in time in a way that we’ve never
experienced as humans on this
earth,” said Logan. “There are
a lot of people within the agencies that are well aware and concerned. But there are also those
whose response is denial that
there’s a real critical issue here.”
Jesse Logan
hikes up
Packsaddle Peak
in search of
whitebark pine.