US groups call on government to save grizzlies
Copyright 2001 Earth Times
August 22, 2001
By DUANE A. GALLOP
Eight environmental organizations have called upon US Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to reinstate the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, a plan to save grizzlies across the region of Idaho and Montana called the Selway Bitterroot Ecosystem that they claim Norton abandoned, the National Wildlife Federation reported.
"There is unprecedented consensus of scientific opinion calling on the Interior Secretary to reverse course and reinstate the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, developed over years of public and expert review and comment," Tom Franklin, the Wildlife Society's Wildlife Policy Director, was quoted assaying.
According to the NWF, Secretary Norton announced that she was "abandoning" a November 2000 Grizzly Bear Recovery plan that was adopted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in favor of a "no action" alternative.
"A no action proposal is just what it sounds like," Ben McNit, Communications Manager for NWF, said. "It means she looked at the study and decided to take no action, to do nothing. No action means to do nothing."
The President of the Society for Conservation Biology, Reed Noss, reportedly said his organization, "urges the Secretary of the Interior to implement the Record of Decision adopted in November 2000 to restore grizzly bears, as scientific studies overwhelmingly suggest this action is essential to recovery of this native carnivore in the lower 48 states."
Secretary Norton's office, when told of NWF's claim that Secretary Norton abandoned the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, didn't issue a statement.
The eight organizations calling on Secretary Norton are, the NWF reported, the American Society of Mammalogists, the International Association for Bear Research and Management, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Bear Specialists Group, the Idaho Chapter of The Wildlife Society, the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society, the Society for Conservation Biology, the Wildlife Management Institute and The Wildlife Society.
"You have to understand something," McNit said. "The matter of grizzly reintroduction was made eight years ago."
According to NWF, Idaho and Montana adopted a citizens management approach that NWF helped initiate. The citizen's committees, the result of a Record of Decision awarded by Idaho and Montana, negotiated with their state's respective timber industry representatives as well as with other organizations.
"They would have overseen the reintroduction effort," McNit said. "That would have given citizens confidence that the recovery plan would incorporate their concerns over how grizzly recovery was managed.
"This is the first time in Fish and Wildlife Service history that a proposal has been made to withdraw an existing Record of Decision," McNit said, "for a decision of no action."
"We believe that there is no sound basis for the no action proposal, especially in light of the fact that it was made without federal, state or private scientific input," Len Carpenter, President of The Wildlife Society, is quoted as saying. "No scientific knowledge about grizzly bears, about the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, of about what is necessary to recover endangered species was consulted."
The Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan had received bi-partisan support, according to the NWF, being praised by Montana governor Marc Raciot (R), Idaho representative Michael Crapo (R), and Montana representative Max Baucus (D).
Not every politician in the Bitteroots agrees with the recovery plan. Earlier this year, the NWF reported, Idaho governor Dirk Kempthore filed a district court lawsuit suit seeking to stop the recovery effort.
"Secretary Norton's ruling is political," McNit said. "She did it to mollify Governor Kempthore who hates grizzly bear recovery. And she's in a hair's breath of giving states veto power over federal law."
According to the NWF, the proposed grizzly bear reintroduction area, the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem in Montana and Idaho,includes more than 5,700 square miles of wilderness, surrounded by more than 20,000 square miles of national forest. These are ideal places, the NWF reported, for grizzly bears.