GRIZZLY
FUTURE
get to manage the bears.”
Indeed, the federal agency has
been facing increasing pressure
from states like Idaho and Wyoming, which want the federal protections removed.
But conservation groups say
that the celebrations for the bear
are premature, and that a decision
to delist them is overly optimistic,
given the climatic changes that
are underway. Bill Snape, senior
counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, cited a “psychological need to declare success” on the
bear’s recovery, as well as a fear of
backlash from the states that want
to see the bear taken off the list.
There’s also a disinclination
among federal agencies, Snape
said, to include climate change as
a significant factor in endangered
species considerations.
“They’re reluctant to come to
grips with what climate change really means for that species,” said
Snape. “The grizzly bear is definitely a climate-impacted species,
and the agencies are not quite yet
willing to admit as much.”
In December, the Interagency
Grizzly Bear Committee recommended taking the bears off the
list, in response to a report from
a panel of experts from across the
HUFFINGTON
02.23.14
federal government. The report
concluded that whitebark pine decline “has had no profound negative effects on grizzly bears at the
individual or population level.”
In its report, government scientists concluded that beetle
outbreaks are “episodic,” occurring every 20 to 40 years, and
lasting 12 to 15 years. Citing Lo-
Conservation groups say
that the celebrations for
the bear are premature,
and that a decision to delist
them is overly optimistic.
gan’s research, the report noted
that “the severity of the current
outbreak is attributed to warmer
winters at higher elevations”
and that “the long-term future of
whitebark pine remains uncertain in light of climate change.”
But it concluded that the current
beetle outbreak is waning, and
management and reforestation
work should be enough to preserve the trees in the ecosystem.
“We’re still going to have some
blowouts. There will be some areas where mountain pine beetles
will still get a stronghold,” said
Mary Frances Mahalovich, a regional geneticist at the Forest Service who served on the scientific
panel that authored the report,