In 1967, as Yellowstone’s 100th Anniversary approached, Park officials decided to end a decades-old tradition of allowing grizzly (and black) bears to feed on garbage at Park dumps -- for instance at Trout Creek.  Although the practice began by accident, at the bears’ own initiative, it created a rare and highly popular opportunity for the public to see numerous grizzlies for hours on end in a relatively safe situation.  (So far as I have been able to learn, no person was ever mauled by a grizzly near any dump frequented by viewers).

 

The dump-closer decision was congruent with widespread belief that such an unnatural activity was inappropriate in a national park dedicated (by law) to conserving Nature.  Nevertheless, there was widespread concern about how this could best be accomplished to minimize adverse impacts on bears and other wildlife, and on people.  

 

*  At that time, Yellowstone grizzlies were being studied by biologists John and Frank Craighead, along with several associates.  They argued that many dump bears obtained the majority of their food from dumps, and might not readily turn to a purely natural diet.  They might not know where to find adequate food or have the skills to harvest it in sufficient quantity.  Also, this would force the dump bears to shift their foraging to parts of the Park where they had not established residency, and might be resisted by bears which had long resided there.  For those and other reasons, sudden loss of garbage at dumps would likely drive bears to seek alternative sources of garbage in campgrounds and residential areas.  This might endanger people and would certainly endanger bears.  The Craigheads suggested instead reducing garbage supply slowly enough so that bears could adapt to subsisting on purely natural foods.  To facilitate the shift, the Craigheads suggested dropping road-killed and winter-killed elk, bison, and other animals progressively farther into the back country.  This would draw bears away from developed areas and give them a critical food supply as they got to know the back country food sources.

 

*  Park Superintendent Anderson and his Chief Biologist Glen Cole -- who had long opposed the Craigheads on other issues while both were at nearby Grant Teton NP -- disagreed.  Anderson and Cole wanted to close the dumps as quickly as possible, so that no more cubs learned to eat garbage and to hang around areas where people concentrated.  They believed that any increased risk to people could be minimized by killing any bear that could be a threat -- a tactic that was never admitted publicly, but resulted in the death of roughly one third of the population.

 

*  Within a few years, the Yellowstone population had crashed.  It was one of the billboard species that won passage of the Endangered Species Act.  So too, grizzly bear populations south of Canada were one of the first “species” “listed” under the ESA as “Threatened” -- at high risk of becoming Endangered within the forceable future.  Listing occurred in 1975.

 

*  At that time, there were several remnant populations.  Two were large enough to be marginally viable: those in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and their environs.  Those in the Cascades, Cabinet-Yaak, and possibly the Bitterroots and the San Juan de Cristos  Mountains, were too small to be viable, and the latter two were on the verge of extinction if not already extinct.

 

The US Fish & Wildlife Service then hired Chris Servheen as the “Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator.”  By law, the purpose of protection under the ESA was to assure “recovery” of each listed species to sustainable viability.  Yet, Servheen espoused goal was not recovery -- a biological goal -- but delisting, a bureaucratic objective.  In theory, delisting could not be achieved without first achieving biological recovery.  But bureaucratic and political realities don’t necessarily coincide with biological realities.  

 

Since that time, several biologists -- including myself -- and numerous “environmentalists” have fought to prevent delisting before true biological recovery has occurred.  My role in this battle was critiquing federal management plans and research reports to determine which plans were adequate and which research findings were valid.  

 

 

 

Returning to North America in 1975, I visited John Craighead.  When he learned of my findings with hoofstock, he asked me to investigate the same thing with bears.  My first step was reviewing existing literature on ursid population dynamics and more general information on roles of adult males in populations of other mammals, both terrestrial and marine.  Given that the Craigheads’ own findings on the Yellowstone grizzly was the most thorough data set available, it became the focus of my analysis -- which became the basis of my PhD  Dissertation.   I sought funding for new field research.  But that failed to materialize -- if only because such studies cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are conducted only by government agencies, under the control of political influences.  Nevertheless, simply analyzing existing data from the Craigheads and other sources turned out to be so challenging that it more than sufficed for a PhD  Dissertation (mine was nearly 500 pages long).

 

Naturally, therefore, when agency management plans and studies on grizzlies were questioned, I was one of the experts called upon to do critiques.  Little did I know that this would occupy much of my time for roughly 3 decades.

 

 

We succeeded in preventing premature delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly for over 30 years.  Nevertheless, in 2006, the Yellowstone population was declared “recovered” and delisted.  That decision has been challenged in federal court and we are awaiting the outcome.  

 

Meanwhile, I am posting roughly 400 pages of materials I wrote on the issue.  This includes 3 popular magazine pieces and numerous newspaper articles that summarize key points for the general public, as well as roughly 350 pages of official testimony submitted to the USFWS in 2006 -- updating critiques I had submitted in the past and adding new critiques.

 

My primary reason for accepting these assignments was a belief that it is essential to maintain the Earth’s biodiversity.  In the long run, this requires maintaining intact ecosystems, each containing at least one permanently viable population of each endemic species.  However, for now the best we can usually hope for is maintaining a viable population of each of the most charismatic species in each of a few ecosystems.  At either extreme, the concept of population viability is critical.  Although the same basic concept is inherent in the Endangered Species Act, it was not specified in this language.  So I have fought to help assure that this standard is maintained as a matter of precedent.

 

That may, of course, be futile, given the ease with which politicians can change statutes and control their implementation.

 

My second reason for fighting these battles was a belief that, to the extent that science is relevant to public policy, the science used should be the best available science -- judged by scientific standards -- and that all scientific evidence should be presented before the filter of political correctness is applied.  Unfortunately, political considerations often determine which scientific research is done in the first place, and which results are made public without distortion and spin.  This has been a major problem in grizzly conservation.  In some contexts, we refer to this as a war between objective science vs. advocacy science.  But the more distortion and spin are applied to “advocacy science” the less it is science and the more it is pseudoscience.  

 

 

That Federal and State biologists and managers have been forced to open their eyes and face such blind spots in the past is a consequence of pressure from external critics such as David Mattson, Troy Merrill, Louisa Willcox, Doug Honnold, and many others, including myself.  This dramatically illustrates how badly external oversight is needed, and how badly normal scientific “peer review” failed, due in part to collusion to assure that the only peers allowed to review the agency work prior to publication or implementation were in league with the agencies or were ignorant of the basic issues.  In cases like this, effective peer review requires exposing the full body of research findings even to peers who are experts on the issues and skeptical of the agency efforts.  

 

Last, but not least, I am committed to bear conservation wherever the animals occur.

 

My efforts on this project were funded by various “conservation groups” including the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, the National Resource Defense Council, and other clients that prefer to remain anonymous.  

 

Normally, scientists publish their work in refereed professional journals as soon as it is written.  However, the organizations funding my work preferred keeping it low-profile or completely confidential until needed in the courtroom.  My argument that the work would have more credibility and impact if published in a journal -- which they now admit is true -- fell on deaf ears at that time.  So much of the material presented here has previously been seen by very few people.

 

Hopefully, it will be useful to anyone still involved in conserving grizzlies in the contiguous USA ad southern Canada, as well as to anyone interested in the history of this conflict or of applied wildlife science in general.

 

Stephen F. Stringham