An idea to reintroduce grizzly bears in Washington’s mountains spurred about 3,000 public comments this spring. The federal agencies heading the process say this review has been a long time coming.
The National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will now take several months to study the comments, both for and against grizzly bear augmentation. That’s a small window of time in this review. Ann Froschauer with Fish and Wildlife says her agency wrote a grizzly recovery plan in 1997 calling for an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the North Cascades.
Froschauer: “We didn’t have funding available until recently. The National Park Service was able to secure some funding to start the EIS process, so that’s why we’ve instigated the process now.”
Historically, thousands of grizzlies roamed in the the North Cascades, but the population is under 20 now. The federal agencies will compile an EIS by summer of 2016, offering proposals that could range from no-action, to augmentation of grizzly bears. More public meetings will follow that EIS, and a final decision is expected late 2017.
Froschauer says the long-term goal is to delist the species. They are listed as endangered in Washington, and as threatened federally.
Froschauer: “The North Cascades ecosystem is one of the designated recovery areas, and that’s sort of our long-term goal, if we can get the species to recover in all of the various recovery systems/areas, then we can look at delisting them.”
The five recovery areas include the Selkirk and Yellowstone ecosystems. The North Cascades system under review spans about 10,000 square miles from the Canadian border down to Wenatchee.
On an interesting note, this pool of comments didn’t just come from locals. Almost 70 percent hailed from Washington, but other input came from Canada, Australia, Spain, and 10 other countries.
Copyright 2015 Spokane Public Radio