Grizzlies Arrival Signals Need to End Baiting in Wilderness and Elsewhere
FEBRUARY 7, 2020
by GEORGE NICKAS
Over the past few years, threatened grizzly bears have been making their way back to their ancestral homeland in the wild country of the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem along the Montana and Idaho border.
Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month put the supervisors of the Bitterroot, Lolo, Salmon-Challis and Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests on notice that any grizzly that migrates into the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem has the same protections as other grizzly bears under the Endangered Species Act.
While thats certainly welcome news, as the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem provides critical connectivity between grizzly bear populations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem surrounding Glacier National Park, its actually not new news at all, ESA protections have always traveled with the imperiled Great Bear.
The fact of the matter is that grizzlies will make their way back to the vast, wild country of the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem, if we let them. Unfortunately, national forests and Wildernesses on the Idaho side of the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem are littered with bait stationsliterally garbage dumped in the woodsused by hunters to lure unsuspecting black bears so they can be shot.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/07/grizzlies-arrival-signals-need-to-end-baiting-in-wilderness-and-elsewhere/
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,478 posts)Baiting animals for months to shoot them as soon as hunting season begins isn't hunting.