More Grizzlies than Lewis and Clark Days?
When US District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula, an Obama appointee, made the decision to block the grizzly hunt planned for this Fall in Wyoming, it was a political decision, not a scientific one. And Terry Anderson with the Bozeman- based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) has the numbers to back that argument up.
Here's what Anderson had to say in a new guest opinion column for The Hill:
Environmentalists, however, contend that the question is not whether the total population of grizzlies is viable, but whether the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) sub-population is. Even on that basis grizzly populations would appear to be sustainable. That population now numbers 700, far more than the 136 that lived in the area when the grizzly bear was listed as “threatened” in 1975.
If there were only 125 bears in Yellowstone, less than biologists estimate, the density would be the same as when the Corps of Discovery passed through Montana.
Click here to read the full piece.