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Plan for Grizzlies May Be Shelved
Norton Preparing to Back Out of Bid to Reintroduce Bears to West

By Michael Grunwald
Wednesday, April 25, 2001

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton is preparing to shelve the Clinton administration's plan to reintroduce grizzly bears into the Idaho and Montana wilderness, deferring to state officials and frightened residents who have battled to keep America's largest predators away from their rural communities, sources say.

The policy shift on one of the West's most contentious issues reflects Norton's determination to cooperate with governors such as Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, a Republican who sued to stop the plan two days before President Bush took office and who denounced the Clinton administration for trying to force "massive, flesh-eating carnivores into Idaho."

Many Westerners had complained bitterly that the Clinton administration's environmental initiatives came at their expense, and Western states voted overwhelmingly for Bush. Norton's intentions for the grizzly may be an early indication of the Bush administration's sensitivity to Westerners -- and its decreased concern about pleasing environmentalists.

Conservationists view the issue as a test of Norton's commitment to protecting rare species in the face of pressure. The grizzlies are a threatened species in the lower 48 states, where they have been driven off 98 percent of their original range.

Norton's aides say she remains committed to expanding the bear populations in Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park. But they also say that she shares some of Kempthorne's safety concerns about introducing the antisocial 300- to 800-pound predators -- actually, omnivores that mostly eat plants but occasionally attack tourists -- into central Idaho and a slice of western Montana, and that she is generally reluctant to impose onerous federal plans over vehement state objections.

"We are listening to the states," said Interior Department spokesman Mark Pfeifle, who noted that the administration is negotiating with Kempthorne but has not yet reached a settlement. "The previous administration didn't always do an adequate job of that."

But defenders of the reintroduction plan -- forged through seven years of compromises among environmentalists, timber officials and mill workers -- call it a model of the kind of nonideological, grass-roots partnerships that Norton has hailed as the solution to America's endangered-species wars. It would delegate unprecedented control over the recovery efforts to state officials and local citizens, and would require no new restrictions on human activities unless state officials and local citizens deem them necessary.

Kempthorne recently agreed to suspend Idaho's lawsuit until June in anticipation of a favorable settlement, and the plan's supporters are bracing for bad news. The Clinton administration plan calls for the first grizzlies to be reintroduced in the summer of 2002, but Bush administration sources said that is unlikely.

Thomas France of the National Wildlife Federation was especially disheartened after a meeting with Ann Klee, a top aide to Norton who was once an aide to Kempthorne. According to France, Klee told him that the Bush administration has no intention of reintroducing bears over Kempthorne's objections. "It doesn't look good at this point," France said. "It's a real shame: Gale Norton ought to love this plan."

Grizzly bears have roamed western North America for 15,000 years -- Lewis and Clark killed several in the Bitterroot Mountain region, where the plan would bring them back -- and they are still abundant in Alaska and Canada. But there are only about 1,200 grizzlies left in the lower 48 states, most of them at Yellowstone, Glacier and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. The bears have become notorious for their infrequent, but sometimes violent, encounters with people, though they are still a striking symbol of wild America and of its transformation by human beings.

The plan to release 25 grizzlies into nearly 6,000 square miles of the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness areas was designed to avert the rancor that has accompanied the reintroduction of endangered gray wolves to the same area. It would establish a citizen management committee to oversee the process, would entrust day-to-day management to states, and would keep all private lands off-limits to bears.

The plan emerged from some painful compromises. Timber interests, worried that federal officials would rule huge swaths of Idaho off-limits to logging, agreed to back the reintroduction as long as the economic impacts were minimized and Idahoans were given control of the process. Conservation groups, cognizant of Idaho's conservative political landscape, agreed not to insist on the strictest possible protections for bears.

The Fish and Wildlife Service endorsed the plan in November. "It maximizes the probability that grizzlies will be around in 100, 200, 300 years," said Chris Servheen, the Service's grizzly recovery coordinator. "They're the quintessential wild animals. They're a barometer of how we treat our environment."

But the Bush administration is clearly in no hurry to implement the plan. It has yet to request nominations to the citizens committee, which is supposed to begin outreach and education efforts this year. Its last court filing suggested a reopening of the comment period, which would delay the plan's implementation and would provide an opportunity to scuttle it. The administration will spend over $300,000 on grizzly recovery this year, but has budgeted none of it for the Bitterroot area; administration sources say they would like to see the Yellowstone bear population taken off the threatened list before they jumpstart a new population in Idaho.

Dick Willhite, a timber official in Elk City, Idaho, has no love for grizzlies or the Endangered Species Act, but he thinks the administration is being shortsighted. "You've got to be realistic," he said. "Everyone wanted to fight to the death over the wolves, and now we've got wolves all over the place. This time, we just wanted to make sure bureaucrats weren't calling all the shots. We're more afraid of bureaucrats than bears."

But many residents of towns on the edges of the wilderness -- such as Dixie, Idaho, and Hamilton, Mont. -- are more afraid of the bears, and state officials have backed them. Now, the Bush administration has decided to back them as well. "The new administration is clearly changing the tone in Washington," said Mark Snider, a Kempthorne spokesman. "They care about states rights and states input. We can tell the difference."