If it dismisses the plan, it must renege on its pledge to give Americans more say over their local environments. The administration is leaning toward Kempthorne. The governor has valid points in opposing the plan. The grizzly is not the kind of neighbor most people want, and to impose that beast appropriately called Ursus arctos horribilis on the citizens of Idaho is presumptuous at best. But the risk of horribilis in the Bitterroot Ecosystem is far less than the governor imagines.
Grizzlies do pose a risk to people.
But to date, every single human fatality from a grizzly attack with the exception of a hunter killed by a wounded bear in the Bob Marshall Wilderness has happened in either Yellowstone or Glacier National Parks. Even in those parks, visitors, who flock there by the millions each year, know that the probability of even seeing a grizzly is close to zero. And in the vast wilderness of the Bitterroot Ecosystem, where only four or five grizzlies are planned for reintroduction per year for five years, and where human numbers are only a fraction of park populations, the probability of sighting a grizzly is even less and the likelihood of a human-bear encounter is virtually nil. By the most liberal estimates, it will take a century before grizzlies number even 200 across the width and breadth of the almost 4 million acres of grizzly bear recovery area. When grizzlies do fill-up the Bitterroot Ecosystem in 2100, there may well be risks to people at the interface of wilderness and human settlement.