October 04, 2005

Grizzly released in Cabinet Mountains

From the Tuesday, October 3, 2005 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

With a rambling sprint from a can-like culvert trap, a female grizzly bear moved into the Cabinet Mountains Sunday, becoming the first transplant for a struggling grizzly bear population in more than 10 years.

And she probably won't be the last, with state and federal agencies planning on several similar transplants from Montana's largest grizzly bear population -- the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem -- to its smallest and most threatened, the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem.

Biologists said it's possible that the bear is pregnant. If so, the transplant to the Spar Lake area in the west Cabinet Mountains could translate to a mother bear with one or two cubs by next spring. That would be a population boom for the Cabinets, where fewer than 15 grizzly bears are thought to exist. . .

She was caught Friday morning in a leg snare in the Spruce Creek Drainage of the North Fork Flathead as part of an ongoing research project that involves capturing female bears and fitting them with radio collars for monitoring population trends in the Northern Continental Divide.

Read the entire article . . .

Posted by nfpa at October 4, 2005 04:26 PM