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Current Status:

Habitat loss, fragmentation, or degradation within and surrounding grizzly bear ecosystems constitute the major threat to the grizzly bear. The cumulative impacts of timber harvest, recreation, oil and gas activity, and associated road construction alter habitat and increase the opportunities for human/grizzly encounters. Quality low elevation habitat, including essential spring range, is often located on private lands with high potential for conflicts.

Achievements:

Human-caused mortality of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Ecosystem has decreased over the past decade due to interagency enforcement of sanitation regulations (e.g., closing of trash dumps), public education, habitat management, and nuisance bear control. The apparently stable population now numbers more than 200 in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. Responding to habitat management within the recovery zones, bears are reestablishing or increasing their use of habitat on Forest Service lands south of Yellowstone National Park.

An estimate of several thousand section 7 consultations with Federal agencies have occurred since 1990, most of them informal and resulting in slight modifications to some projects. The following agencies and projects have been involved: Forest Service (road building, logging, access permits, recreation, powerline construction, mining, oil and gas leasing, range programs); National Park Service (road building and maintenance, facility construction and maintenance, visitor use); Bureau of Land Management (mining, timber sales, special use permits, recreation management, noxious weed and insect control, animal damage control, land exchanges); and Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (animal damage control).

Current Recovery Needs:

Recovery efforts include continued population monitoring in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, habitat conservation, interagency educational programs, cumulative effects analysis testing for habitat monitoring, and various sanitation projects.

Section 6 Funding and Activities:

The Service provided $38,000 in FY 1991 and $38,000 in FY 1992 to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to assist in gathering habitat and population data.

Partnerships

Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service: In 1986, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Wyoming Game and Fish Department authored the Interagency Grizzly Bear Guidelines (Guidelines) for acceptable population and habitat management. The Forest Service helps compile annual population monitoring records on forest lands. Habitat conservation measures include protection of essential bear habitat and mitigation to make multiple use objectives compatible with recovery. Educational programs and sanitation enforcement are reducing bear/human conflicts. Bureau of Land Management actions taken under the Guidelines conserve grizzly bear habitat, help make multiple use compatible with recovery, and decrease bear/human conflict. The National Park Service monitors the grizzly population in Yellowstone, manages nuisance bears, strives to make visitor use compatible with grizzly bear recovery and habitat conservation, and carries out educational programs and sanitation enforcement efforts that have significantly decreased bear/human conflict.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department: Responsible for nuisance bears on private, State, and Federal lands outside of national parks, this State agency has initiated educational programs and private lands efforts to reduce bear/human conflict. It employs a full-time biologist to coordinate bear management activities, research, and control actions.

Recovery Plan Status:

Plan approved 1/29/82.