By Rebekah Jensen
I spent my 20s and part of my 30s in western Montana. For much of that time, I lived in backwoods locales with few neighbors. One neighbor I’ll never forget, though, is the grizzly bear.
Here in the Methow, I’ve contemplated what it would be like to have grizzly bears on the landscape again. Grizz once occupied the North Cascades and surrounding lowlands, but hunting, trapping and habitat loss drove our local population to the brink of extinction. The few bears that remain in this transboundary ecosystem are in British Columbia, in a chunk of habitat isolated from other B.C. grizzlies.
The population won’t persist on its own. But restoring the grizzly to the U.S. portion of the North Cascades Ecosystem (NCE) has been met with controversy.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) first acknowledged the need for action in 1991 by designating the NCE “recovery zone,” a swath of remote and largely public land extending from the Canadian border to Snoqualmie Pass. A concrete restoration plan was developed and submitted for public input in 2017 and 2019 — but was shelved shortly thereafter.
Now the proposal is rumbling to life again, and we have another opportunity to weigh in. As someone who once lived in grizzly country, and whose current home is in the heart of the NCE recovery zone, there are a few points I would ask you to consider.
Things to know
First, grizzly bears are not out to get you. An avid hiker and runner and occasional hunter, I logged hundreds of miles and dozens of campouts in Montana’s grizzly country. After all that time, I only had two grizz sightings: one from inside my cabin, and one from the side of the road.
Maybe it was luck of the draw that I never found myself at the same point in space and time as a big bruin. But I suspect it had more to do with common sense practices and the bear’s own ways. When on foot in grizzly territory, I made enough noise to be heard. I rarely hiked or ran in the dark, and took a friend along whenever possible. When camping, I slept far from where I cooked, ate, and stored food.
When you’re not surprising or luring grizzlies, they generally avoid you. Indeed, despite a booming outdoor tourism industry and a population of 1,000 grizzlies (five times the NCE target), Montana’s Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem has had only 11 fatal grizzly attacks in the past 50 years.
Second, it is a privilege to live in an intact ecosystem. Here at the knees of the North Cascades, we have a good chunk of ancient biodiversity still accounted for, and don’t have to reach far to restore the original form and function of our wildlands. By choosing to return the major players, we improve our wilderness experience and the health of the system as a whole.
Where grizzly bears range, they fill a vital ecological role. You can think of them as hulking backcountry rangers, dispersing plant and berry seeds, managing deer and elk populations, creating habitat trees for insects and birds, maintaining alpine meadows through their digging habits, and hauling nitrogen out of streams to fertilize the surrounding forests and meadows.
Third, grizzly bears belong in Washington’s NCE. Although there are some who would tell you otherwise, it’s clear from the fossil record, fur trading invoices, ethnographic accounts, and 150 years of modern observations that grizzlies once roamed the North Cascades on both sides of the border. As indigenous stewardship gave way to land and resource gobbling of the Euro-American stripe, grizzly bears appear to have been squeezed into the subalpine, with the population eventually buckling.
Time to be heard
Which brings me to my final point: There is still time to act.
When I left Montana, it was for a state where the Golden Bear lumbers across every flag and official seal despite having been shot to extinction a century ago. Californians love their ghost grizzly, but no longer have a population to rescue.
Here in the NCE, it’s a different story. With a vast expanse of high-quality habitat and an eleventh-hour opportunity to recover this regional denizen, we can choose a better ending.
Through Dec. 14, the USFWS and National Park Service are soliciting public comments to guide their preparation of a new restoration plan. Now is our chance to make our voices heard about grizzly recovery in Washington’s North Cascades. The NCE is our wild backyard; only the great bears are missing. Let’s bring them back.
Rebekah Jensen lives up the Twisp River, where she works as an ecological consultant and enjoys keeping track of the local wildlife.
