Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance suggests you include the following topics in your comments:

• • Tell the agency you care about grizzly bears  –  It is vital the Service hears why people value grizzly bears, especially from those of us who routinely share the landscape with bears in some way. Yes, living with grizzly bears can pose certain challenges, but it is something we can all learn to do and have a responsibility to do if we live in grizzly country. Grizzly bears are part of what makes Montana – and the northern Rockies – a unique and beautiful place to live.

• • Express your support for the agency’s decision to keep the NCDE population listed as Threatened – This population is the lynchpin to grizzly recovery throughout the northern Rockies. Continued federal protections offer the best chance for these bears to connect with other isolated populations in the GYE, Cabinet / Yaak, and Idaho, connectivity essential to durable recovery across the northern Rockies.

• • Express appreciation for the agency’s emphasis on establishing natural connectivity between populations and recovery zones – According to the best available science, establishing natural genetic and demographic connectivity between currently isolated grizzly bear populations in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho is essential to long-term viability of grizzly bears in the northern Rockies. Protecting habitat and minimizing conflicts to facilitate movement and lower densities of resident bears across  connectivity areas is essential to making this happen.

• • Tell the agency that non-lethal tools and education must remain the primary way to manage and prevent conflicts, not lethal measures – Non-lethal measures, such as improved animal husbandry, electric fencing, securing attractants, hazing, or proper use of bear spray, have proven essential in preventing and managing conflicts to minimize the death of grizzly bears, and harm to people, livestock and livelihoods. We strongly encourage and support continued investment in such measures as well as in public education about living and recreating responsibly with grizzly bears.

• • Express strong reservations that proposed 4(d) rule will lead to unnecessary grizzly bear deaths – While we recognize that some more flexibility and efficiency for state and tribal wildlife managers, livestock owners, and certain other individuals to respond to grizzly bear conflicts with lethal measures may be beneficial to facilitating continued cooperation in grizzly bear management, the proposed rule appears to provide way too much latitude, and rely way too much on individual judgement on when it is acceptable to do so. Clearer criteria and stronger sideboards are needed, especially at a time when human-caused mortality is at record levels!

• • Oppose any issuance of permits to private individuals to kill a grizzly bear involved in conflicts with livestock on public lands!  – Public lands are essential wildlife habitat, lands and wildlife that belong to all of us. Grazing public land is a privilege, not a right. If a grizzly must be euthanized, it should only be done after non-lethal measures have been tried and ineffective, and then only by trained agents to ensure the correct bear is targeted.

• • Ask the Fish and Wildlife Service to explain the basis for designating all grizzly bears and recovery areas as a single “Distinct Population Segment” –  We are concerned the new classification may impede recovery of grizzly bears in the northern Rockies by making future delisting contingent on the successful recovery of grizzly bears in the Washington Cascades when these areas should biologically and socially be treated as separate processes. The new classification could unnecessarily impede natural expansion of grizzly bears into suitable habitats beyond the newly defined boundary.

For your comments to carry the most weight, please be sure to craft them in your own words. Be as specific, substantive, and personal as you can be. However, don’t sweat it. Any comments that speak up for grizzly bears are better than agonizing over the perfect ones.

Sign up for our mailing list to receive updates about this project.