After hearing concerns about the initial time frame, the service decided last week to push the comment deadline back to March 30.
“We had some requests for an extension and we wanted to be responsive to the public,” said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “This will give people a little more time to develop their comments.”
The extension will probably be published in the Federal Register sometime this week.
In a letter last week to U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, six Montana scientists, including several prominent bear biologists, asked for the extension as well as the release of all the data the service used in developing its proposal.
“In a spirit of complete transparency, we believe it is important that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service make available the raw data used in drafting this proposal, and that they allow the public and the scientific community time to review and evaluate this complex and technical information,” the letter said.
Charles Jonkel, president of the Missoula-based Great Bear Foundation, said the delisting proposal fails to properly emphasize the decline of grizzly bear habitat in and around Yellowstone.
Jonkel was one of the six asking for the extension.
In the past, Jonkel said, grizzly bears faced challenges from agricultural growth, which included predator killing programs. Later, an emphasis on mining, logging and increased recreational demands hampered grizzly recovery efforts, he said.
“Now we are into rampant real estate exploitation, subdivision for second and trophy home development, urban and recreational sprawl, and massive use of the remaining wild areas by hikers, ATVs, snow machines and countless other human activities,” Jonkel said.
Grizzly bears have essentially filled the habitat that remains south of the Canadian border, he said. And what remains is shrinking as more people push into the area.
“The population curve must follow the habitat curve,” Jonkel said. “As long as that habitat curve is going down, I have to be worried.”
Neither the states involved, nor the federal government has adequately reviewed delisting relative to that habitat loss, he said.
In 1975, when the Yellowstone population first earned its ESA protection, there were about 200 bears living in the 9,200-square-mile area in and around the national park. There are now more than 600.
The delisting proposal is supported by the National Wildlife Federation, but other environmental groups oppose it.
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
Have your say
To comment on the delisting plan for Yellowstone-area grizzly bears, write to Grizzly Bear Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University Hall 309, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812. To comment by
e-mail, write to FW6_grizzly_yellowstone@fws.gov. The deadline is March 30.
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