Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Now, grizzly bears are a bit of a hot topic lately.

[upbeat music] In part due to renewed pressure from Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to delist them under the Endangered Species Act, arguing that the two largest populations, those near the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem near Glacier and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, have surpassed federal recovery goals.

Now, before European settlement, grizzlies likely numbered as many as 50,000 and ranged from Alaska to Mexico, and from California to the Great Plains.

But by the 20th century, there were thought to be less than 1,000 bears in the lower 48, and in 1975, grizzly bears were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

But for grizzly bear populations to connect and their ranges to continue to expand, that means they're starting to rely on private and working landscapes, what we call the working wild, where ranchers, rural communities, and wildlife all must share space and all make a living.

[upbeat music] Now, while there's increasing awareness in the conservation community about the importance of connected landscapes for wildlife to move around and the critical role that private lands play in supporting wildlife, I think there's less awareness around the fact that grizzly bears need connected habitat, too.

This is especially true when you look at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

While biologists estimate there are around 1,000 bears in the area, right now it's largely an island, cut off from the cluster of bear populations in northern Montana, Idaho, and into Canada.

Welcome to Bison Jam, the podcast that covers wide-ranging topics from Yellowstone National Park and the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

I'm your host, Hugo Sindelar, an assistant professor of film at Montana State University.

Today we are continuing our series about the wildlife of Yellowstone.

i would say most of them are pretty migratory yeah i mean like in general and in the scheme like their migration could only be five or six miles like depending on like but it's gonna generally go high to low so they're you know high range high alpine stuff in the summer lower in the in the winter but um there are some that migrate pretty crazy distances i don't know any numbers off the top of my head but like yeah i mean those ones like specimen ridge and stuff they're gonna walk all the way down and probably end up somewhere in the gardner basin like however far that is and um but there's examples and outside of yellowstone too of some pretty long migrations that's awesome

And so speaking of kind of Yellowstone, you talked about where they're found in the northern area of the park very specifically, but I'm wondering generally where they're found in the greater Yellowstone.

Are they also in, like, Grand Teton, in the mountains outside Yellowstone? Like, in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, where do you find bighorn sheep?

Everywhere? Historically, yeah.

Yeah, but not currently.

And that really slowed that decline down in Montana.

And then in Wyoming, in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, um, they were such a draw to the national park and they were so important to that entire experience that while they were killing their wolves and their mountain lions and some of their other predators, they kind of gave their bears a bit of a break in Yellowstone, and that also allowed that to be another source population in the Lower 48.

So that, you know, in the mid-1900s, we're, up until 1975, we're looking at around 1,000 bears by the time they were protected by the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

Even less than 1,000 in the Lower 48.

So in '75 was kind of the first big step forward for grizzly bears, and that's when they received protections under the Endangered Species Act.

And then the next really great thing that happened was in 1983, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team was formed, and that consisted of people in the National Park Service, in USGS, US Fish and Wildlife Service, that essentially decided they were gonna combine this, you know, amazing pool of knowledge to figure out how to properly conserve this animal and give them the kind of things they need to spread across the West in ways that they used to.

Um, so they had six kind of recovery zones that they outlined, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem being one of them.

And I was lucky enough to work, um, when I was in Yellowstone under Kerry Gunther, who is, like, the guy when it comes to Yellowstone grizzly bears.

So this year, FWP said, "We have IPaW 2.0, and here's our new population estimate." Um, and they made some changes with data inputs for territory modeling and pack size, and I think something that was a pretty big revelation was FWP is now saying the average pack size in Montana is four, um, which is low.

In Yellowstone, I think the average pack size, uh, is almost 12.

Um, so this has huge repercussions for wolf health as a whole-

Right

Like, the main argument that we hear is, "They're recovered.

This is an ESA conservation success story.

We've done it," because there are about 2,000 grizzlies, mostly in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which is around Glacier National Park.

They are not connected, um, so we are not getting that exchange of genetics between those populations.

Yeah.

So Bison Jam is a podcast that kinda covers all the stories from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

It was actually, um, an idea I had back when I was in school.

Uh, so Marcus and I worked on kind of a, a short-lived, uh, kind of interview slash m- uh, one time was a magazine when we were there.