GRIZZLY
FUTURE
“but it’s not going to be the watershed path of destruction we’ve
seen in the last 10, 12 years.”
“There are still going to be areas
where there are beetle outbreaks,
and those may be the areas where
Jesse and his people are working,”
she said, “but when you look at the
entire ecosystem, the entire beetle
population is waning.”
Federal scientists say that the
delisting recommendation is evidence of the success of species
protections. The grizzly population in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem is probably bigger than
it’s been in more than 100 years,
HUFFINGTON
02.23.14
said Servheen, and is three times
bigger than it was 32 years ago.
Further, the report concluded,
grizzly bears are adaptable enough
to substitute other foods for the
pine seeds, and any decline in
whitebark in recent years has not
had a dramatic effect on the bears.
“Bears are omnivorous. They
use a wide variety of foods,” said
Servheen. “They’re not dependent on whitebark. They eat it
when it’s available. When it’s not
available, they eat other stuff.”
He noted that bears in the Yellowstone region eat at least
75 different types of food on a
regular basis. Meanwhile, grizzly bears in the northern part
of Montana don’t eat whitebark
Mountain
pine beetles
will carve a
J-shaped
galley into the
phloem tissue
of whitebark
pine, where
they lay eggs.