A good plan broken

By Marv Hoyt. Greater Yellowstone Coalition. March 26, 2002

Last summer, the director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game asked me to serve as one of the nine members of the Yellowstone grizzly bear delisting advisory team. The director also selected three alternate members for the team. The Yellowstone grizzly bear team members and alternates represented a wide range of interests and viewpoints, including ranchers, hunters, business owners, local officials, scientists, conservationists and American Indian interests. Initially we came to these meetings with our own interests, biases and agendas.

The team met 10 times over a period of six months before recommending a final draft of the grizzly bear management plan to Fish and Game. Many members of the team sacrificed vacation days, evenings with their families, time away from work and so forth to participate in these meetings. We did so because grizzly bear management in Idaho was and is important to all of us. Over the course of months, the team members learned much about grizzly bears, their habitat needs and conflicts inherent in managing the species. We learned from a wide variety of sources, from Fish and Game staff, other agency managers and biologists, grizzly bear experts and the firsthand knowledge of many of the team members.

Many thorny and contentious issues arose during our deliberations over grizzly bear management. Yet we resolved each issue and moved on to the next. No single interest or interest group prevailed in getting everything it wanted into the team's final plan. All of the team members had to give ground on various issues, even when the compromises were difficult and personally uncomfortable. The final management plan was a carefully worded and carefully balanced compromise. It was clear that significant changes could cause some team members to withdraw their support.

Unfortunately, the Idaho Legislature disregarded the intent of the Yellowstone grizzly bear management plan developed by the team by dramatically altering the language. Specifically, the language in the Legislature's version of the plan:

- seeks to confine grizzly bears to an area that is inadequate to ensure their continued existence in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

- fails to acknowledge that grizzly bears already occur in numbers outside the primary conservation area (previously the Yellowstone grizzly bear recovery area).

- removes language about building public tolerance and support for any expansion of the grizzly bear population outside the primary conservation area.

- interjects the Legislature into all future management decisions for the Yellowstone grizzly bear population.

- places threats to livestock equal to threats to human safety.

- disregards legal Indian treaty rights associated with tribal hunting.

- places the funding of grizzly bear management in eastern Idaho on the back of the American taxpayer, yet declares that only Idaho will have a voice in future management decisions.

Because these significant changes remove hard-won and important balances from the plan, the conservation community, myself personally and as the Idaho representative for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, have withdrawn support for the approved state of Idaho Grizzly Bear Management Plan for the Yellowstone Population.

Marv Hoyt
Greater Yellowstone Coalition Idaho Office
162 North Woodruff Avenue
Idaho Falls, ID 83404
Ph. 208.52.7927 FAX 208.522.1048
 mhoyt@greateryellowstone.org