Doug's Blog

Save the Yellowstone Grizzly, now a non-profit organization must accelerate its activism during August, as the Final Decision on Delisting is due in federal court August 30, 2018 in Missoula, Montana. We now must expand our activism to defend all grizzly bears south of Canada: the USFWS has begun the process to delist the Glacier ecosystem's grizzlies and the Yaak population segment of bears is threatened with a high-volume through-super-hiking trail. Among our projects, we plan to produce another series of short videos, this time featuring ethical hunters discussing the ethics of trophy hunting grizzly bears. Also, a general media campaign to advocate against delisting and trophy hunts and a final road show to Washington DC to generate national news attention. We will publish a pro-grizzly, anti-bear-killing article in the Daily Beast by Doug Peacock.

In order to accomplish these goals, we must raise sufficient funds immediately in order to begin. Please help us fight for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears. You can do so by clicking the “Donate Now” button. August will be a busy month. The survival of the Yellowstone grizzly population depends on all of us.

Here is a partial budget for our autumn activities:

View or Download, PDF

Learn more at savetheyellowstonegrizzly.org

Thanks for your thoughtful and generous support,
Doug Peacock

I prefer to stumble through the woods slowly but others favor jogging and getting there fast. On a proposed northern route through the Yaak Valley of northwest Montana, a nationally-targeted destination would send all manners of hikers--ethical, experienced, and inexperienced--into one place grizzly recovery cannot afford a single mistake, a single messy campsite.

Hiking routes for humans range from game trails to the so-called high-volume industrial recreation super trails like the much touted and travelled Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest hiking super highways, which are collectively called the “triple crown of long distance hiking.” They all have their place and uses. What may be practical for one popular region might be an abomination in a more remote area.

I’ve bushwhacked all my life, though as a writer, I can see the attractiveness of bagging one of those triple crowns: it’s a ready-to-go memoir with the mileage signs delineating the book’s structure. You could do it for a speed record or have mid-life crises along the way—making for a solid read.

The faint trials I bushwhack are less suitable for linear story telling and more a metaphor for tripping and exploring your way into the unknown, maybe during periods of seeking in your own life. All kinds of backcountry travel are appropriate at different stages of your life’s journey.

I remember when I first told my friend Rick Graetz, the fine photographer and publisher, about Rick Bass’ protectiveness of the Yaak’S roadless areas and its grizzlies. Graetz said he didn’t get it: The Yaak was claustrophobic, green, brushy, full of ugly mosquitoes with no views of distant peaks or snowfields. It’s not like a high ridge in Glacier or a vast meadow complex in Yellowstone crawling with wildlife.

Now the Pacific Northwest Trail Association (PNTA), along with USFS acquiescence, has proposed a nearly straight line route from Glacier Park west through critical habitat for the isolated Yaak grizzly population of perhaps as few as 19 bears with 2-3 females of breeding age. I happen to like grizzly bears and eventually cramming 4000 or more hikers per year through this tiny corridor will destroy the Yaak grizzly population; encounters along the trail are inevitable and almost always settled with the bear losing her life.

Also, the PNTA favors “going high,” for the views of which the Yaak Valley does not have. Why would a hiker on a 1200-mile journey seek to actively avoid the lowest elevation in the state, and the incredibly scenic Kootenai river, largest tributary to the Columbia, with its side waterfalls and ghost towns? My old friend, the late Chuck Jonkel, studied this problem because 28 miles of the proposed Yaak trail went through critical grizzly habitat. Chuck said a better, safer, more scenic route lay to the south, linking lookout towers by ridge tops with great views all along the trail.

People and grizzlies are incompatible because humans are ignorant of grizzly behavior; a charging mother grizzly is not necessarily a dangerous situation; I’ve been charged by sows almost two dozens times and merely stood my ground inoffensively. No bear has touched me. * Recently a Wyoming wildlife warden shot a killed a mother grizzly with three now-abandoned cubs. Fish and Wildlife officials along with the sheriff applauded the warden. As long as these false and misinformed views prevail, the Yaak grizzlies are doomed by this massive influx of hikers, many of whom will be armed.

Promoters of the high-speed trail cite Glacier National Park as a place where humans and grizzlies mostly get along. I filmed bears and worked as a lookout in Glacier for over a decade and one of the reasons people don’t run into bears all the time is because popular hiking trails often have an adjacent drainage that is without a trail. The grizzlies can get away. Like the North Fork of the Flathead or Many Glacier—there’s not a trail up every creek. The Yaak Valley trail will constitute much more of a defile inviting animal tragedy. It should be noted also that Glacier is a nationa park, with a huge protected land mass; the Yaak is not a park, or at least not yet.

Don’t build a high-volume super-hiking trail in the Yaak.

Write the Kootenai National Forest or the federal advisory committee.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Doug Peacock
Montana

Legendary environmentalist Doug Peacock on what the removal of grizzlies from the Endangered Species list means for Yellowstone’s wilderness.

Is Yellowstone's Grizzly Bear Population Doomed?Is Yellowstone's Grizzly Bear Population Doomed? Men's Journal - 4/27/17

Two contrasting news stories about bears in the West were published on April 2, 2017. The first is a credible six-year scientific study of black bears by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The second is a report from the Yellowstone Ecosystem subcommittee meeting of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team in Jackson, Wyoming, featuring the head scientist spouting familiar political bullshit about too many grizzlies ever expanding their Yellowstone range.

The Colorado study documents rising temperatures, fewer days spent in the den, increased human conflicts, and dramatically decreasing female black bear populations in southwestern Colorado. Rising conflicts with bears eating human garbage does not mean the bear population is rising. Garbage, they conclude, is not addicting; bears go back to natural food when it is available. The key to bear populations is the carrying capacity: how much food is there, which is directly related to soil moisture and plant production that is, in turn, directly related to climate change and (by correlation) to drought and rising temperatures in the American West.

On the other hand, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team in Yellowstone doesn’t believe climate change matters, writing in the Federal Register: “Therefore, we (The Fish and Wildlife Service) conclude that the effects of climate change do not constitute a threat to (the Yellowstone grizzly bear population) now, not are they anticipated to in the future.” Frank van Manen, head scientist of Study Team, says the grizzlies are expanding their range by 11 percent every couple years. Why? He says it’s because there are too many bears: “We are packing more sardines in the sardine can.” Van Manen thinks they are overflowing from the can into new territory where conflicts with livestock abound, and that today we are seeing the largest Yellowstone grizzly bear population size since listed as a threatened species in 1975.

This is bullshit. Climate change has already decimated key Yellowstone grizzly foods, especially whitebark pine nuts (which is now functionally extinct as a food source for bears), and has lowered the carrying capacity of the habitat through drought and rising temperatures (for a scientific discussion, click on the Grizzly-Sardine-Can link below).

Bears are ranging out of the Yellowstone core area, but it’s because there’s not enough food there. Hence, the density of grizzlies has decreased. The population of Yellowstone bears has not increased for 15 years and has probably declined since 2007—coincidentally the date of the tipping point for methane release in the Arctic, the commencement of abrupt climate change, and the sudden death of whitebark pine trees in Yellowstone. Is there any chance these events could be related? You bet your ass.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/02/colorado-black-bear-management/ 

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5130361-155/grizzly-bear-habitat-to-expand-in

http://www.grizzlytimes.org/single-post/2015/12/17/Grizzly-Sardine-Can-Blues

The US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) said on January 12, 2017 that it could take the agency another six months to finish reviewing 650,000 public comments submitted on the decision to remove the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the ESA list. Many of those 650,000 comments contain arguments, scientific and otherwise, about why the Yellowstone grizzly bear should not be delisted, especially because of the threat of climate change and an ill-advised trophy grizzly hunt. To review is to take another look, to evaluate. Does this mean the FWS would re-open its mind to those thousands of comments who argue the best available science says don’t delist the grizzly?

I can only wish this to be the case. The Endangered Species Act’s "best available science" mandate remains Yellowstone’s grizzlies’ best friend Whereas the past years’ Save the Yellowstone Grizzly campaign appealed to the White House, a fresh effort should be aimed directly at the FWS where some biologist are hopefully still weighing the best available science.

Our June 3, 2016 letter to President Obama included this statement:

"Unfortunately, the March 3, 2016, delisting announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) came paired with an astonishing declaration in the Federal Register: 'Therefore, we conclude that the effects of climate change do not constitute a threat to the [Yellowstone grizzly bear population] now, nor are they anticipated to in the future.’"

That letter was signed by E. O. Wilson, George Schaller, Jane Goodall and Michael Soule—among the world’s most respected scientists.

I believe that now we should ask many, many other scientists, peers of those FWS agency biologists, to speak out on behalf of the best available science for Yellowstone’s grizzlies. This dialogue will take place in a public forum, as there is no official comment period remaining. Those who love wild nature as well as our grandchildren must fight to recognize and respond to the beast of out time—climate change, which is indeed probably also the key argument for not delisting the grizzly.

Call it peer pressure, but let’s give it a shot; we have nothing to lose unless it’s everything.

For the wild,

Doug Peacock

A star-studded coalition of scientists, authors, movie stars and conservationists has launched a media campaign and petition to convince President Barack Obama to take executive action, overruling an agency proposal to take the Yellowstone grizzly bear off the Endangered Species list.

Esteemed scientists Jane Goodall, George B. Schaller, Michael Soule, and Edward O. Wilson joined with actors Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford and Michael Keaton, authors Carl Hiaasen, Scott Momaday, Terry Tempest Williams, Douglas Brinkley, and Thomas McGuane, along with businessman Yvon Chouinard and former Yellowstone park superintendent Michael Finley, sending a plea to the president following an announcement by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) last spring of its intention to remove federal protections of the bear.

Today, Save the Yellowstone Grizzly launches a petition to reverse the FWS action, along with a website featuring video testimony from Bridges, Chouinard, Goodall, Hiaasen, Tempest-Williams and myself, in which we make their case for the grizzly’s future.

Yellowstone’s grizzly bears are in grave danger and require continuing federal protection for their survival. It is imperative the great bears remain listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The FWS has regrettably taken steps to remove these protections (an action called “delisting”), and allow a grizzly bear trophy hunt on the edges of Yellowstone National Park. Americans would never permit hunting of the American bald eagle; hunting Yellowstone’s grizzly bears is equally unacceptable.

Yellowstone’s bears are genetically and physically isolated from all other grizzly populations. Their long-term survival depends on their ability to wander safely outside of Yellowstone National Park, linking up with other grizzly populations in other ecosystems.

Grizzlies are one of the slowest reproducing land mammals in North America. Delisting triggers a trophy hunt that will put them on the path to extinction.

The Yellowstone grizzly’s major food sources are in decline: Cutthroat trout have been reduced by 90 percent, and most critically, global warming has decimated the grizzly’s most important food, nuts of the whitebark pine tree.

In its delisting proposal, the FWS makes the declaration that climate change will not affect the Yellowstone grizzly now or in the future. This myopic statement flies in the face of scientific study and reality on the ground, calling into question the agency’s competency and intentions.

You can help. Please join our continuing campaign by signing this petition asking President Obama to take executive action, keeping the Yellowstone grizzly bear on the Endangered Species list. Also, you may view the videos and get updates at our website:

Please help spread the word by sharing these links with your friends.

Petition:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/save-yellowstone-grizzly

Website:
http://www.savetheyellowstonegrizzly.org

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/savetheyellowstonegrizzly

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9ln3kUxQh3MJDJxcqmI7w

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/yellowstonegriz

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/savetheyellowstonegrizzly/

Pinterest:
https://www.pinterest.com/savethegrizzly/

Google+:
https://plus.google.com/101521529684120328038

Hash tag:
#savetheyellowstonegrizzly

June 3, 2016

The President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama:

We are writing to thank you for your leadership on climate change and to ask for your help: Yellowstone grizzly bears are in grave danger.

Your administration has regrettably taken steps to strip the bear’s federal protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), opening up a grizzly bear trophy hunt on the edges of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone’s bears are a remnant and isolated population. They must be allowed to wander safely outside of Yellowstone National Park.

Americans would never accept hunting of America’s bald eagle; hunting Yellowstone grizzly bears is equally unacceptable.

To make matters worse, America’s great bears face the same looming threats as many species across the country due to climate change. In the last decade, climate change has decimated the Yellowstone grizzly’s most important food, the white bark pine nut.

Unfortunately, the March 3, 2016, delisting announcement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) came paired with an astonishing declaration in the Federal Register: “Therefore, we conclude that the effects of climate change do not constitute a threat to the [Yellowstone grizzly bear population] now, nor are they anticipated to in the future.”

This statement is even more disturbing in light of your administration’s commitment to addressing climate change, because climate change predictions are dire for all our planet’s species. How can it be that the military considers climate change in all its decisions, while the agency responsible for our wildlife, the FWS, does not?

The same argument – the denial of climate change – was used by the FWS in 2014 to deny listing the wolverine in the lower 48 states. On April 4, 2016, that decision was reversed in federal court, and declared “arbitrary and capricious.” The FWS was ordered to reconsider its reasoning about climate change. It’s now time for this federal agency to play catch up and use “the best available science” to keep grizzly bears on the ESA list.

A critical question: Who benefits from delisting Yellowstone’s grizzly bears? The only certain outcome of delisting bears will be trophy hunts in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

We ask you to instruct our federal wildlife managers to withdraw the March 3 rule and order the FWS to take another look at how climate change impacts grizzly bears. Any decision about the bear’s future should be put on hold until independent scientific review can explore potential impacts to bears from climate change. We strongly suspect that America’s great bears face a dire future, even with the continued protection of the Endangered Species Act.

Respectfully yours,

Doug Peacock

Disabled veteran, Author, Guggenheim Fellow

Concerned scientists:

Professor Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology

George B. Schaller, Panthera Corporation and Wildlife Conservation Society

Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace

Michael Soule, Professor Emeritus, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz

Friends of the Yellowstone ecosystem:

Jeff Bridges, Academy Award-winning actor

Douglas Brinkley, Author and professor of history

Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia, Inc.

Michael Finley, Former superintendent Yellowstone National Park

Harrison Ford, Award-winning actor

Carl Hiaasen, Journalist, author

Michael Keaton, Award-winning actor

Tom McGuane, American Academy of Arts & Letters

N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winner

Terry Tempest Williams, Author and Guggenheim Fellow

Ted Turner, Philanthropist and conservationist

Download the Letter (PDF)

Dear friends-

As you probably know, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to strip Yellowstone’s grizzly bears of protection under the Endangered Species Act, and open the population up to hunting. The FWS states, astonishingly, that climate change does not constitute a threat now, or in the future, to grizzly bears.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would join me in sending comments to FWS opposing this delisting. Comments are most valuable when they raise questions about the substance of the agency’s proposal. It is not enough to simply state, “I oppose delisting the Yellowstone grizzlies.”

You might consider commenting about the effects of climate change on grizzly food sources, or on the foolhardiness of hunting the second-slowest reproducing land mammal in North America, or the uncertainty inherent in the vague triggers the agency has proposed to protect the bear in case of excessive mortality.

If you’d like to get some ideas, you can read my article on delisting that was published last month the Daily Beast: Grizzlies in the Crosshairs.

The agency is taking public comments on this proposal through Tuesday, May 10. Comments are being accepted electronically, Click Here. 

Comments are also being accepted via mail: Public Comments Processing, Attn: Docket No. FWS–R6–ES–2016–0042, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, MS: BPHC, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803.

Thank you for your help.

For the wild,

Doug Peacock

A eulogy to Jim Harrison on the Daily Beast.

A month ago, I drove a half-cooked leg of lamb around the foot of the Santa Rita Mountains to Jim Harrison’s place on Sonoita Creek in southeastern Arizona. The lamb was half-cooked because I’d planned to finish it off in Jim’s oven while our dogs played. Jim lived on one of southern Arizona’s last permanent streams, a ribbon of rich habitat known for its giant cottonwoods, native fishes, and vast array of birds and butterflies. It’s a place buzzing with life. We drank wine out back while the dogs splashed in the creek, backlit in the winter sunlight. I hold on to that image now: Jim, America’s greatest living writer, died there last Saturday afternoon... Read more.

A government proposal to remove the grizzly bear from the list of endangered species would surely condemn the species to almost certain slaughter.

The Daily Beast 3/18/2016

Here is the Daily Beast article posted last night. Note, all photos are of grizzly 399, a mother bear who a Jackson Hole outfitter has pledged to kill as soon as the states issue trophy hunting licenses.

The animals currently face two great threats to their survival: global warming, and the U.S. government.

Outside Online March 9, 2016

http://www.outsideonline.com/2061226/op-ed-dont-delist-yellowstone-grizzly-bears

Please read the excellent article in today’s New York Times op-ed on the bison slaughter in Yellowstone. This lingering outrage remains a slap in the face of all things wild and reasonable: How little things have changed for the buffalo. I went back to the articles I had written about Yellowstone bison 20 years ago and was appalled how today so much is the same—the myth of brucellosis, the holy right of cattle grazing on public land and the irrational hatred, the need to kill the dark animals of Yellowstone--the wolf, the grizzly and the bison. The cover stories in Audubon and Wild Earth were written in response to the slaughter of over a thousand bison during the winter of 1996-1997, the same year the Buffalo Field Campaign was organized. And still, the National Park Service is pimping for the well-funded livestock industry. Shame on us and, yes, we are all in this together. Support the Campaign and tell Yellowstone Park to read its own mandate. 

For the wild,   Doug Peacock

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/opinion/the-bison-roundup-the-government-wants-to-hide.html

Yellowstone Park continues to break its own visitation records. Millions of Americans flock to see its world famous animal spectical. One of Yellowstone's most iconic creatures, the endangered Grizzly Bear, has become a target for wandering outside the park boundary. Its seasonal food sources there are now gone as a result of climate change so it has to move to survive. Being a hungry bear is not a good enough reason for states around Yellowstone to call for a trophy hunt of this creature beloved by millions. Trophy hunting would spell disaster for the grizzly as it struggles to adapt to so many human pressures on its shrinking wilderness home. Trophy hunting should never be part of Grizzly Bear management. Please join me in demanding no tolerance for trophy hunts of the endangered Grizzly.

Sign the Petition

More News
1/14/16 - Bear necessities Yellowstone grizzlies still need federal protection - Missoula Independent

http://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15054.htm

DO NOT LET THE GOVERNMENT KILL THIS BEAR:

We need to honor this hiker and let the mother bear roam wild. The reason: Mother grizzlies never intentionally kill humans; they don't care about us, only the safety of their cubs. The hiker surprised the sow grizzly. We will never know exactly how but likely she was on a day bed and he got too close. The hiker had wounds on his arms, indicating he probably fought back, an understandable but bad reaction to a mother bear to whom resistance means her cubs are still in danger. We don't know why she made contact; close proximity possibly made worse by running. Running or trying to climb a tree after a mother grizzly with cubs is the worst choice, followed by fighting back. Apparently, the hiker's body was cached and fed upon. This most disturbing of consequences needs to seen in context of the natural world of the bear. Anything dead out there is Yellowstone this time of year is seen as a most valuable food source during the lean times of summer. Witness past bison carcasses in Hayden Valley where humans got too close, then in turn were eaten too. Once dead, a human is like any other animal. If several grizzlies are around, the most dominant animal, often a big male, will appropriate the carcass. So if a mother bear killed a human in perceived defense of her cubs, that doesn't mean she cached or fed on the body. The salient point here: This mother bear is no more likely to repeat this most natural of aggressions--kill, or consume a human--than any other mother grizzly bear in the world. The feds are more nervous about litigation and bad press than public safety. The only way to totally protect the public from wild bears and insure safety for park visitors is to kill off all the grizzlies. the federal agencies don't want that any more than we do. Help them clarify their thinking. This was a defensive natural act for a wild grizzly. It will probably never happen again to this mother bear, though of course it might--and that is the great value of wilderness and their risky animals. The hiker was experienced, knew the area well and loved to take this hike. His now missing opinion is what would have mattered to me: What would he have wanted for the fate of this bear?

Doug Peacock, 8-8-2016, Northern Yellowstone

Recent piece by David Gessner.
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/02/the_real_grizzly_man_no_one_knows_brown_bears_like_vietnam_vet_monkey_wrencher_wild_man_doug_peacock/

Just skip the "how I met the griz" stuff.

Interview with Doug Peacock - The Wildernist

A broad-ranging discussion about extinctions, then and now:

Home of the Brave

Take a look at this short video clip and decide for yourself: A newspaper oped writer told me that this bureaucratic action in Cody, Wyoming was proper protocol for a (WY and the Interagency Grizzly Committee) government-run meeting; I finally watched it myself and thought of the end of Easy Rider.

The Tribal Coalition (now up to 35 separate tribes) is vehemently opposed to the government's proposal to Delist the Yellowstone Grizzly (meaning to strip the bear of federal protections under the Endangered Species Act).

Disrespect or otherwise, the battle is heating up and the tribes will be heard; they are calling for the removal of Chris Servheen, the committee's boss. The words of tribal elders about the bears are eloquent and often ground-shaking. Check them out.

DISRESPECT! Northern Cheyenne James Walks Along is thrown off the stage

The extreme DISRESPECT shown to the Northern Cheyenne Nation by Wyoming State public officials,...

YOUTUBE.COM

The only reason you can still find wild country in Yellowstone National Park is because people don't go there. Whether it's benign neglect, remoteness or that the park service simply forgot to build a trail into these pockets, it all adds up to tiny, precious and vulnerable wilderness.

The biggest threats today are the Loomis/Bishop Paddling Bill (see Todd Wilkinson link below) and the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team who have announced plans to intensify grizzly trapping, snaring and tranquilizing in the most "remote" parts of the Yellowstone ecosystem. This unimaginative practice constitutes unnecessary, highly invasive and unproductive science that has already resulted in many dead bears and at least one killed human. It's simplistic and yeilds no significant data, yet high-tech in that helicopters are used in these most "remote' areas of Yellowstone. When you see a flock of choppers like dragonflies hovering around some distant peak in Yellowstone, you know it's a grizzly trapping operation. And why? The Interagency Team has already unanimously voted to remove federal protections from Yellowstone's grizzlies (Delisting) and all this useless harassment of bears is only aimed at the hope the team's findings will support removing these bears from protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Please bug your favorite official/politician to stop this waste of resources and serious threat to both grizzly bears and the wild habitats they need for survival.

Doug Peacock, Ajo, AZ

See Todd Wilkinson, Paddlers should avoid misusing hero's words (Jackson Hole News)