The polar bear may be the world’s largest land carnivore – and the focus lately of Endangered Species Act news – but not close behind is the American brown bear, or grizzly, and its ESA situation is perking along in an odd sort of parallel with its larger cousin.

The Star-Tribune’s Cat Urbigkit caught up with a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who has been in the thick of struggle between the feds, starting with the Bush administration and continuing now, and various enviro groups over whether to put and keep the Yellowstone grizzly under the act’s safety net.

The common element here is that both bear subpopulations – Alaska white bears and Yellowstone brown bears – are primarily faced with ecological hazards of a changing climate. The northern bears are losing ice and the seals that live on it (plus the comfort and reliability of denning and living on the ice). The southern ones are losing food too. In their case beetles thriving in warmed-up heights devastate the high altitute white bark pines whose cone seeds, or nuts, provide the Yellowstone region’s bears with vital late summer and fall calories.

None of this polar-grizzly bear nexus is in Urbigkit’s piece. But the article  is a useful reminder that when the threats are so diffuse, managing them is not simple. It’s hard to stop global warming with things like hunting regulations. Mostly we learn here that the government’s local researcher sees no point in stiffening federal safety measures for the grizzlies when some figures show that the bear population is growing. The article also quotes lines from a local judge’s ruling a few weeks ago that puts grizzlies back under ESA regulation. But surely, in light of the specific figures that the feds’ biologist providdes, a call for some specific replies would have paid off. After all the main plaintiffs in the case who favored relisting, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the legal-minded EarthJustice organization, are not far away in Montana. While they get lots of ink, Tracker would like to have seen what they have to say in this article as well.

Related Grizzly Bear-country News:

• Jackson Hole Daily – Cory Hatch: Bear group scolds judge ; Same basic news. But Hatch did call up EarthJustice for a brief reply.
• Bozeman Daily Chronicle – Ben Pierce : Paradise Valley hunter mauled by grizzly bear ; He was hunting elk. The bear, maybe ditto, and she had cubs with her. Interesting is that this is not the first such recent incident, it says here.

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.