{"id":973687,"date":"2023-01-29T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=420405"},"modified":"2023-01-29T11:00:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:00:04","slug":"a-biologist-fought-to-remove-grizzlies-from-the-endangered-species-list-until-montana-republicans-changed-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/01\/29\/a-biologist-fought-to-remove-grizzlies-from-the-endangered-species-list-until-montana-republicans-changed-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Biologist Fought to Remove Grizzlies From the Endangered Species List \u2014 Until Montana Republicans Changed His Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
When Chris Servheen<\/u> speaks to skeptical audiences across the Northern Rockies, he holds one goal above all others. The famed bear biologist aims to fix his lessons in the mind of the hunter. He wants his words to return in that critical moment when the hunter is alone in the wilderness, with a grizzly in his sights, and no one to witness what comes next.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision is made when you\u2019re looking through the scope and there\u2019s a grizzly bear there,\u201d he says. \u201cAre you gonna shoot him or not? You think, \u2018I can get away with it. I don\u2019t like grizzly bears. I can do this.\u2019 Or do you think, \u2018It\u2019s worthwhile to have these animals around \u2014 I shouldn\u2019t do this\u2019? That\u2019s where the bears live or die.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, the solitary hunter in the crosshairs of Servheen\u2019s speeches is choosing between letting the grizzlies be or poaching them \u2014 but that could soon change. While grizzlies are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, Republican lawmakers across the Northern Rockies<\/a> are pressing the Biden administration to turn management of the bears over to the states, thus allowing for the opening of legal hunting seasons.<\/p>\n By the time he retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2016, Servheen had become a prominent advocate of the view that federal grizzly bear recovery efforts had worked and the time for delisting had come. Now the president and board\u00a0chair of the Montana Wildlife\u00a0Federation, the state\u2019s oldest and largest\u00a0conservation organization, Servheen\u2019s position on the delisting question has turned 180 degrees. The reason is rooted in politics, and what he sees as a wave of fact-free \u201chysteria\u201d sweeping the Rocky Mountain West.<\/p>\n In the past two years, Servheen watched with horror as a right-wing takeover in state politics \u2014 from Gov. Greg Gianforte\u2019s 2020 election to the establishment of a Republican supermajority in 2022 \u2014 has radically reshaped Montana\u2019s relationship to wildlife policy, particularly in the cases of protected predators that some Westerners see as living symbols of federal overreach.<\/p>\n The first wave of the assault targeted wolves. During Montana\u2019s last legislative session, in 2021, Gianforte \u2014 with the help of handpicked wildlife commissioners representing trophy hunting, outfitting, and livestock industries \u2014 signed bills to deregulate wolf-hunting techniques. The state also did away with hunting quotas on the northern border of Yellowstone National Park, leading to the deadliest winter<\/a> the park\u2019s biologists have ever recorded, with roughly a fifth of Yellowstone\u2019s wolves killed in a matter of months.<\/p>\n With a new legislative session now underway, Servheen \u2014 who also serves as co-chair\u00a0of the North American Bears Expert Team for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature \u2014 and other veteran wildlife biologists across Montana are profoundly concerned that Republican lawmakers are angling to apply the same regressive approach on grizzly bears.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a clown car of absurdities here,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe people that are coming up with these ideas are totally misinformed about what really is going on, and it\u2019s all based on their misconceptions and their crazy feelings about \u2018I hate predators.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In Montana,<\/u> the effort to delist grizzlies is led by Gianforte and his fellow Republican, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines. The pair bonded in the 1990s, working at RightNow Technologies, a tech company Gianforte co-founded with financial support<\/a> from Daines\u2019s father.<\/p>\n RightNow was purchased in 2012 for a reported $1.8 billion. The sale helped transform Gianforte and Daines from very wealthy to ultra-wealthy. A decade later, the two men are Montana\u2019s most prominent Republican lawmakers, attending the same evangelical church in Bozeman, itself a node in the rapid rise of Christian nationalism<\/a> fast transforming the state\u2019s political landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we await final delisting, we must do all that we can to ensure public safety, to stop the risks to human life, and to prevent further livestock depravation that is devastating Montana agriculture,\u201d Daines said<\/a> in a 2020 interview concerning the bears\u2019 status in the state.<\/p>\n Though grizzlies do occasionally prey on livestock, the Republicans\u2019 claims of widespread and devastating financial impacts overstate the scale of the problem. According to the Montana Department of Livestock, grizzly bears were responsible for killing<\/a> 143 of Montana\u2019s more than 2.7 million sheep and cattle in 2022, contributing to a loss of 0.000052 percent of the state\u2019s livestock. The state paid ranchers $234,378.37 to compensate for those losses.<\/p>\n\n In his many years dealing with the conflicts that arise from expanding human and grizzly populations, Servheen has learned to separate positions from interests.<\/p>\n \u201cI talk to many people about bears. Many times what they say is that: \u2018I hate bears. We don\u2019t want the federal government telling us what to do. We don\u2019t like the Endangered Species Act. We don\u2019t want grizzly bears to be in this area or around my property.\u2019 Those are all positions,\u201d he said. \u201cThe position discussions are worthless because you end up hitting a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Interests, like not wanting to lose livestock to grizzlies, are a different story. In the half century since grizzlies were added to the endangered species list, Servheen and a wider community of researchers and conservationists have developed an array of conflict management practices to address the inherent challenges of living with grizzlies: from compensation for ranchers, to the installation of electrified fences and food storage containers, to the relocation \u2014 and in some cases, removal \u2014 of problem bears.<\/p>\n \u201cTrying to key in on what those interests are to people, and listening to them as opposed to telling them \u2014 I found that to be the most productive approach,\u201d Servheen said.<\/p>\n Once interests are addressed, the work of underlining the value that large predators bring to an ecosystem \u2014 the kind of conversations that may prevent a hunter from becoming a poacher in a moment of unsupervised opportunity \u2014 can begin.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s a clown car of absurdities here. The people that are coming up with these ideas are totally misinformed about what really is going on.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n