Back in 1975, the American Grizzly bear was declared endangered. With only minor differences, the American Grizzly bear is the same species as the European bear, that lives from Western Spain, through Europe to the Kamchatka bear of far Eastern Russia.
In 1975 the USA lower 48 states grizzly bear population numbered somewhere between 136 animals and 312, so it was essential that it was protected. Nowerdays the same 48 states have a population of around 1500, but given that this number would have been as high as 50,000 when people started migrating to the USA in large number, this recovery is only just getting going.
However, as this recovery is not spread evenly, there are parts of north America, who are having to learn to live alongside these large predators once again.
Back in 1975, the few remaining Grizzly bears either lived in Yellowstone, or along the Canadian border. People were moving into these areas, usually with little intention of living alongside bears. Bears breed slowly, they require huge ranges and they do kill people on occasion.
To start, they worked on changing peoples attitude to the bears. They started a compensation scheme for livestock killed by bears, they closed roads bisecting bear habitat and fenced in landfill so it stopped attracting in the bears. The population in and around Yellowstone flourished with a current population of about 1700 bears. Bears and livestock farming are not incompatible, though it is true that it takes more work to have each alongside one another. Having said that, the health of the whole ecosystem relies on apex predators doing their job. As such, for the good of the whole ecosystem we must learn to farm alongside predators such as bears.
Clearly there needs to be some changes as to how to live alongside bears once again. What must happen though, is that if trophy hunting resumes, the number of bears that can be taken must be well below the numbers born each year. The Grizzly bear still has a great deal of recovery left to go – for instance, the California flag shows the extinct California bear. As an apex predator, like the returning wolf, and even the Jaguar, the top predators in the USA both control prey species and lesser predators (one example is that black bears are far less numerous in areas where Grizzly’s still exist).
