The Inaccuracies Of Tracking Grizzly Bears

In the Yellowstone National Park area, grizzly bears were recently removed from protection of the Endangered Species Act. And as no surprise, lawsuits weigh down the courts by bear lovers to stop the delisting and return the bear to federal protection.

I got laughing this morning as I read an article that appeared in the Jackson Hole News and Guide that told of how grizzly bear deaths were on the rise, nearing that magical “threshold” when consideration should be made to place the bear back under protection. Here’s what it said.

Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team officials estimate that 39 grizzly bears have died in 2008. Seventeen of those deaths involved hunting incidents, six where the result of natural causes and four had unknown causes. The remainder of the deaths were some form of human-caused death, including management removals of problem bears. (I added the emboldening.)

The remainder, which is 12 by my calculations, is said to be human caused. You have to read on to catch how that number is calculated.

When a person other than a wildlife manager reports a grizzly bear death, researchers count it as three toward the thresholds because roughly two-thirds of citizen-caused grizzly deaths go unreported, said study team leader and U.S. Geological Survey researcher Chuck Schwartz.

If you report that you killed a grizzly bear, researchers automatically chalk that up to three deaths because they know some go unreported. Interesting. I wonder if that would stand up in a court of law for reason enough to declare too many bears are being killed?

What’s interesting is all the clamor about too many bears being killed but yet the same officials state that the grizzly bear population is growing steadily.

The good news is that researchers estimate Greater Yellowstone’s grizzly population is higher than last year — 596 bears, up from 571. Schwartz and his team made the estimate based on 84 new cubs observed with 44 females. Researchers estimate that the population continues to grow about 4 percent annually.

Isn’t it interesting that researchers can tell us that there are 571 bears in the Greater Yellowstone area and at the same time say that when one bear is reported killed, they multiply it times 3 to cover what they say will be unreported deaths.

Most people know that wildlife management, when it comes to population estimates, is only estimating but when it comes to the courts, if they want to use those numbers as exact, the estimating becomes immaterial.

Tom Remington

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