BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Fewer threatened grizzly bears are being killed in and around Yellowstone National Park, and scientists said their numbers appear to be holding stable as officials consider lifting protections for the animals.
State and federal wildlife officials were scheduled to meet Wednesday in Bozeman, Montana, to review the bear’s status.
Eliminating protections would open the door to limited hunting in the Yellowstone region of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. That decision will come from Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.
According to the latest estimate, 757 bears now inhabit the region. Twenty bears have been reported killed or removed from that population so far this year, said Frank van Manen, a grizzly researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.
By comparison, a record 56 grizzlies were reported killed or removed in 2012, and 29 last year.
Most bears die following conflicts with humans. Those range from hunters shooting bears in self-defense to wildlife agents capturing and killing bears that attack livestock or damage property.
In a case earlier this month outside Yellowstone, wildlife officials euthanized a 28-year-old bear that tried to get into a storage building containing horse feed.
Conflicts had been steadily increasing earlier this decade, including several high-profile instances of bears attacking and killing tourists and hikers. But overall conflicts have been easing since 2012.
“Things are looking really good for the second year in a row,” van Manen said. “This is where we’d rather be, with fewer (bear) mortalities, fewer conflicts with hunters, fewer issues with bears getting into garbage or conflicts with livestock.”
However, van Manen cautioned that human run-ins with bears are still up over the long term.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision is pending on whether the population has recovered enough to revoke the animals’ threatened status under the Endangered Species Act.
Grizzlies received federal protections in 1975 after getting wiped out across much of their historical range.
The Yellowstone population has slowly rebounded and the three-state region now hosts the second-largest concentration of grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states. Their range covers 19,000 square miles centered on the high country of Yellowstone and surrounding national forests.
The bears temporarily lost protections in 2007 but got them back two years later after environmental groups successfully challenged the decision in federal court.
A judge ruled in part that the Fish and Wildlife Service had not fully considered the potential harm to grizzlies from the loss of a key food source - the nuts of high-elevation white bark pine trees - due to climate change.
Since then, government scientists have issued studies showing that the bears’ diet is highly varied and not dependent on white bark pine. The matter is now in the hands of Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe, said Chris Servheen, the agency’s grizzly bear recovery coordinator.
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