Should Grizzlies be Reintroduced to the North Cascades?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Joel Connelly

Opponents to reintroduction of the grizzly bear argue that it’s an “apex species” and so a threat to humans. They ignore the fact that humans are the apex species that has eliminated ursus horribilis from 95 percent of its onetime habitat in the lower 48 states. A grizzly bear may decorate California’s state flag, but the last grizz in the Golden Bear State was shot a century ago.

The National Park Service has just released a 199-page environmental impact statement recommending that grizzlies be reintroduced to the North Cascades, where the last confirmed siting was south of Glacier Peak in 1996. The last grizzly kill was up Fisher Creek in 1964, four years before creation of the North Cascades National Park complex. Awkwardly, a grizzly just apparently killed two campers in Canada’s Banff National Park.

“The U.S. and Canadian portions of the greater North Cascades Ecosystem constitute a large block of contiguous habitat that spans the international border but is isolated from grizzly bear populations in other parts of the two countries,” the NPS concluded. It found the expanse of wildlands has a “carrying capacity” of 280 bears but aims to initially relocate and sustain a population of 25 grizzlies, letting it build naturally.

Two growing populations of grizzlies are currently found in the lower 48, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and in the Northern Rockies around Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Isolated, endangered populations hang on in the Cabinet Mountains of Montana. The southern Selkirk Mountains of northeast Washington and northern Idaho see an occasional “transient” grizzly crossing from British Columbia. A “transient” is a helluva thing to call a grizzly in its historic habitat.

https://www.postalley.org/2023/10/06/should-grizzlies-be-reintroduced-to-the-north-cascades/