In two separate legal challenges, conservation groups in May moved to protect grizzly bears in the Upper Green River portion of Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest.
Western Watersheds Project, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection asked U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta to rule quickly to prevent the “unlawful killing and harm (‘take’)” of threatened grizzly bears.
In addition to the grizzly bear, the injunction also seeks to protect the endangered Kendall Warm Springs dace, a fish species about 2 inches in size, which inhabits the Kendall Warm Springs area with numerous seeps that flows 984 feet into the Green River.
The plaintiffs’ motion for the preliminary injunction asks Mehta to act before grazing is slated to begin on June 14 across six allotments in the Upper Green River area.
In a separate challenge, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia, saying the “reliance on a flawed biological
opinion” and establishment of a livestock grazing area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest violates the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Upper Green River
The Upper Green River area rangeland project, which encompasses the Green River and Gros Ventre River headwaters, lies approximately 30 miles northwest of Pinedale, WY, in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The area is located in the Pinedale Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, mostly in Sublette County.
Portions of the Gros Ventre and Bridger Wildernesses are located in the project area (12,447 acres and 5,371 acres, respectively.) State and private lands lie adjacent to the southern portion of the project area, and private property is also located inside the project area boundary. The northern boundary of the project area is near the Continental Divide, which separates the Bridger-Teton and Shoshone National Forests.
Six allotments comprise the project area—Badger Creek, Beaver-Twin, Noble Pastures, Roaring Fork, Wagon Creek, and the Upper Green River. Currently, 21 different term grazing permit holders are authorized to graze approximately 9,089 cow-calf pairs or yearlings and 47 horses, from June 14 to Oct. 15.
Grizzly bears in the GYE
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) listed the grizzly bear as a threatened species in the lower 48 states under the ESA in 1975. Today scientists estimate there are less than 2,000 grizzly bears left in the lower 48 states, occupying five isolated populations.
In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), USFWS and other agencies manage grizzly bears and their habitat by combining the primary conservation area (the existing Yellowstone grizzly bear recovery zone as identified in the 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan) with adjacent areas where occupancy by grizzly bears is anticipated and acceptable.
Combined, these areas form the demographic monitoring area, within which habitat is considered suitable to support grizzly bears and recovery criteria for grizzly bears are assessed. The Upper Green allotments all lie within the demographic monitoring area.
In a study funded by the USFWS, the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, and conducted by Smith L. Wells, it states “as the Yellowstone grizzly bear population expanded in numbers and distribution throughout the GYE in the last several decades, more federal grazing allotments were prone to potential interactions between bears and livestock.”
The study noted that grazing allotments were becoming occupied by grizzly bears. The majority of livestock depredations were tied to their areas of expansion, including in the 1990s, where 98 percent of depredation events occurred on allotments not previously occupied by grizzly bears.
“During 1992-2014, despite the fact that approximately one-fifth of grazing allotments became vacant or closed, the number of GYE-wide livestock depredations increased. Depredations in the GYE consisted mainly of cow-calf pairs (mostly calves killed) and sheep.
“While cow-calf pairs experienced much greater depredations than other classes of livestock (approximately 70 percent of all depredation events during the study period), depredation was in proportion to their availability on the landscape since approximately 70 percent of allotments were stocked with cow-calf pairs.”
From 2010-2018, there were 527 confirmed conflicts, and 35 grizzly bears were removed from the allotments in response. Conflicts in the Upper Green River area have increased an average of 9 percent per year as the grizzly population density has increased. The USFWS noted more bears are moving into areas with more human and livestock use, and they expect more conflict to occur.
2019Record of Decision
In 2019, the USFWS issued a Record of Decision for cattle grazing in the area, determining that it “will not jeopardize the continued existence of the grizzly bear.” The agency estimated that 72 bruin bears could be removed from the Upper Green between the 2019 and 2028 grazing seasons, and “will not appreciably reduce the likelihood of survival and recovery of grizzly bears.”
“We had a number of conversations with the grizzly bear recovery coordinator and also with Wyoming Game and Fish,” said Nathan Darnall, the USFWS deputy supervisor for Wyoming. “In looking at the grizzly population and looking at the future expansion of the population… we decided that this number, in concert with everything else, was sustainable.”
USFWS stated in the decision, “We believe the increasing trend in conflicts and removals and the cyclical nature of these occurrences are due to an expanding grizzly bear population, which we expect will continue in and around the action area.
“As a result of an expanding bear population, we believe the action area will continue to experience a regular increase in the number of conflicts and management removals over the next 10 years of the grazing permit.”
The USFWS also noted the cattle permittees had tried a variety of practices over the years to reduce conflicts “with varying degrees of success.” These include conducting several conflict-reduction workshops, changing grazing rotations and systems, hiring five to six range riders, utilizing five rider camps on the allotments in addition to day help, and experimenting with herding techniques in an attempt to deter predation.
There are about 700 grizzlies in the GYE, but most observers agree the figure is conservative. The biological opinion did not estimate the population for the Upper Green “action area,” which is larger than the actual allotments. In 2013, the estimate was somewhere between 51 and 60 grizzlies. Based on these figures, they are enough for the federal government to propose removing the grizzlies from the threatened species list but has been overturned by a judge as the agencies are not justified in their proposal. — Charles Wallace, WLJ correspondent
