We'll start seeing more grizzly bear monitoring activity next year as this article from the Thursday, December 1, 2005 online edition of the Missoulian attests . . .
The focus on recovering grizzly bear populations is moving north.
With the Yellowstone population of grizzlies on the verge of being removed from the federal threatened and endangered list, the folks charged with leading recovery efforts are looking to refocus on bears that call the northern Continental Divide ecosystem home.
On Wednesday, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee heard about the challenges it and a growing team of biologists and researchers will face in duplicating the success story now occurring in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
“The circumstances here are really quite different than they were in Yellowstone,” said Chris Smith of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Yellowstone population of grizzlies is the most studied population of bears in the world. An interagency team of researchers has published more than 178 studies on the population since 1974.
That's not the situation in northwest Montana, Smith said.
Researchers are in the midst of gathering information about the bears and their habitat, but there's still a lot to learn, he said.
Illegal killings are another major challenge facing the recovery effort.
Read the entire article . . .