Establishing a healthy Grizzly bear population in the wilderness of Central Idaho and Western Montana is critical to the recovery and persistence of the species and too important an initiative to be sacrificed as a political favor. In addition to adopting and implementing Alternative 4 of the FEIS, I also encourage the Fish and Wildlife Service to meet its management responsibilities to improve the status of the Grizzly bear within and between the Greater Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak, Selkirks, and North Cascades recovery areas. The Service should begin by listing the Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk Grizzly populations as Endangered under the ESA and promptly designating their critical habitat. A high priority should be to protect our remaining roadless areas, and other areas of existing and potential Grizzly habitat vulnerable to logging, off-road vehicle use, mining and energy development. They only exist in isolated wilderness ecosystems in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington.
Grizzly bears are an umbrella species that require large unroaded wilderness habitat.
By protecting the bear, we also protect the multitudes of other forest species that depend on intact and functional ecosystems. Although federal and state governments are beginning the push for the grizzly bear's delisting, their numbers are roughly the same as when they were listed in 1975 and threats to habitat for the bears have escalated dramatically.