Grizzly Delisting

A reporter for Montana Public Broadcasting Service called to ask my opinion about removing grizzly bears from the Endangered Species list.

If grizzlies are delisted, the state of Montana will manage them. Part of the proposed management plan allows livestock producers to shoot a bear that is caught in the act of killing livestock.

Currently, if a producer sees a bear killing livestock, she is legally required call a federal Wildlife Services person to deal with the bear – and by then the dead livestock.

I happen to have an opinion about grizzlies.

Just like most of the issues we face as a society, it’s not black and white.

The reporter asked good, open-ended questions, but they implied several assumptions.

The first assumption that ticked me off was that giving producers the right to shoot a bear that is attacking livestock would automatically lead to people shooting every bear they see and then claiming it was attacking livestock.

That assumption is as offensive as claiming every Black man will automatically rob a liquor store.

It destroys the fundamental underpinnings of our society.

The second assumption that made me mad was that I personally should carry the financial burden of society’s desire to facilitate apex predator populations.

Sure, grizzlies are an integral cog in the ecosystem.

I feel fortunate to live in a place that hosts fearsome predators such as bears, wolves, wolverines and mountain lions. Life in this place is heightened, magnified, felt in the core of our being.

But society should share the cost of maintaining entire ecosystems.

The state recognizes this and offers reimbursement for grizzly attack victims.

Yet, it isn’t just about the money.

I won’t discount the cost of losing livestock to a predator, but my moral obligation to protect my livestock is always top of mind.

My sheep and cattle depend on me, and me alone, to provide feed, water and protection every single day.

I need every tool available to meet that responsibility.

Every day, I choose which tool to use. I rarely need a gun to feed, water and protect my sheep and cattle, but I might need it one day.

As the reporter and I chatted, I realized his mistaken assumptions are the result of one encompassing assumption.

The Endangered Species Act treats grizzly bears as a group.

Other laws apply equally to people. That is fair and just.

But, just as people are individuals within the group of humanity, grizzly bears are individuals within the group of Ursus arctos horribilis.

Every bear does not act the same as every other bear, just as every human does not act the same as every other human.

So even though grizzlies and humans overlap in some spaces, most bears avoid humans and their environments while other grizzlies wreak havoc.

The Montana grizzly management plan allows more leeway to remove bears that wreak havoc so most bears can coexist peacefully.

The Montana plan manages grizzlies as individuals within a group just as other laws manage people as individuals within a group.

Some would argue that the bears were here first so we have no right to manage them at all.

That argument is simplistic and unrealistic.

Not managing grizzlies is a form of management, just as allowing wildfires to burn or not holding criminals accountable are forms of management.

On the other hand, eliminating grizzlies completely removes a cog in the complicated machinery of the ecosystem. The impacts of dropping that cog reach far and wide.

It takes finesse and a willingness to admit the complexities to find a balance so one group doesn’t carry the entire economic, environmental and moral expense of a management strategy.

I thanked the reporter for asking.