There are only two transboundary grizzly bear populations in Montana—the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem’s bears in Glacier National Park, which number roughly 750 bears, and have as core protection over two million acres of National Park and designated wilderness—and the grizzlies of Yaak Valley, which number roughly 25 animals, with three to four breeding age females with young. The Yaak grizzlies have zero acres of permanently protected land, and have been holding on, decade after decade, waiting for help that has not yet arrived.

Learn more:

Yaak advocates describe trail route as ‘giant train wreck’ - Daily Inter Lake, August 28, 2019

Ruckus Over A National Hiking Trail: A MoJo Interview With Writer And Conservationist Rick Bass - Mountain Journal, June 25, 2019

The Kootenai National Forest’s legacy of clearcutting continues—most recently with the ill-advised Black Ram project, in the wildest part of the Yaak Valley—and with a new threat as well, with the industrial recreation industry focusing on the establishment of a 1200-mile thru-hiker trail, the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT), a spur route to the immensely-traveled Pacific Crest Trail, which last year issued 6000 permits.

The PNT, which was long opposed by environmentalists, finally received authorization via attachment as a midnight rider on an Omnibus Bill, sponsored by then-representative Norm Dicks and Senator Maria Cantwell, and without Montana consultation or agreement. Now it seems it will take an act of Congress to de-authorize it in Montana, and convene a panel to utilize best available science, economic opportunities, and public comment, as should have been done in the first place—if there is even to be any trail at all. The current route bisects dozens of miles of habitat previously designated for the Yaak grizzlies as core habitat, essential to their recovery. Targeting a steady stream of hikers into this rare alpine habitat, where the Yaak female grizzlies raise their young in summer and fall, is neither fair to hikers or Yaak grizzlies. A better, southern scenic route exists, south of the Kootenai River, and should be considered, as should be a no-trail alternative.

These two projects—the proposed international thru-hiker Pacific Northwest Trail, and the Forest Service’s proposed Black Ram project—pose immediate dangers to the corridor of connectivity between Canada and Montana for Yaak grizzlies, widening an existing fracture zone fraught with logging roads and clearcuts. Please write a letter of support for Yaak grizzlies, urging a legislative correction to the PNT rider, and an alternative project in the Black Ram area that increases, rather than decreases, the grizzlies’ chances of recovery, and increases the wild quality of this singular valley.

Thank you, from the folks at Save the Yellowstone Grizzly. It is all our hope that we one day live to see a grizzly from the Yaak make it down from the Canadian border to the Bitterroot, and over to Yellowstone.

TEXT: TALKING POINTS
When Congress designated the Pacific Northwest Trail in 2009, they also mandated that the forest service produce a management plan within two years. This management plan is required to determine the carrying capacity of the trail, and include public oversight. At this point, the forest service is eight years out of compliance with the law. We see this injunction as a way to get the process moving again.

But to be honest, the lack of a management plan is just the tip of the iceberg. There are reasons the Forest Service rejected this trail for 30 years: economic costs and grizzly bear habitat concerns chief among them.

The Yaak Valley Forest Council wants what’s best for hiker, bears, and Montana. This problem requires a solution that so far neither collaboration nor litigation have been able to fix. It needs legislation.