Bitterroot Range

Exposure.

Mid-September in the Bitterroot Range.

Temperatures that a man with his gear and experience should have managed for a week, not three days.

He'd been found in a circle pattern.

Fairley? They're not from around here.

That's not a family name in the Bitterroot Range.

They don't have any children, do they, Morgan?

Nope.

The power behind its movements, the way it climbed without effort, and the depth of its breathing, it all stays fixed in my mind.

I'd been spending several weekends that fall camping alone in the Bitterroot Range of northern Idaho.

I was in my early 30s then, an avid hunter, and I often went into the backcountry to scout for elk before the season started.

I had hunted these mountains for years and knew every ridge, creek, and draw within several miles of camp.

numbers?So Jared, my understanding is that two out of the six recovery zones don't have established populations, but they have been identified in the recovery plan as having suitable habitat for grizzly bears.

So that's the North Cascades in Washington, and the Bitterroot Range along the Idaho, Montana border.

It's a different situation like the Bitterroot, where we need bears to walk there from another ecosystem, for example, the Northern Continental Divide into the Bitterroot.

And as bears move outside these recovery zones, which again are mostly public land, grizzly bears enter into a more complicated landscape.