https://www.usnews.com/news/us...zly-hunts-in-rockies



Judge Declines to Issue Quick Ruling on Protecting Grizzlies

Wildlife advocates have pressed a Montana judge to restore federal protections for a group of about 700 grizzly bears and block hunting that's set to begin this weekend, but the judge says won't make an immediate ruling.
Aug. 30, 2018, at 4:46 p.m.

Judge Declines to Issue Quick Ruling on Protecting Grizzlies

The Associated Press



By MATT VOLZ, Associated Press

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana judge said Thursday he would not make an immediate ruling on whether to restore federal protections for a group of about 700 grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains, forcing wildlife advocates to try to find another legal way to block bear hunting set to begin this weekend in two states.

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen said at a packed court hearing in Missoula that he knew many people expected him to issue a quick ruling from the bench on the fate of the bears living in and around Yellowstone National Park, but told those attending "that's not going to happen."

He said he would issue a decision as quickly as possible but did not say whether he would rule before Saturday, when Wyoming and Idaho scheduled the first bear hunts to begin in the Lower 48 states since 1974.

"If I issued a decision today that would mean I have already made up my mind," Christensen said.



Christensen asked Erik Petersen, Wyoming's senior assistant attorney general, if his state would consider delaying the hunt until the judge's ruling is issued. Petersen did not directly answer Christensen, but made a counteroffer to the judge.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead was willing to "make adjustments" to the hunting season, Petersen said, if the judge leaves Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in charge of managing the bears — even if he rules that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to revise its rule declassifying grizzlies as threatened.

"The likelihood of any significant harm to the population is essentially nil," Petersen said.

Christensen did not take Petersen up on his offer in the hearing. The judge's delayed ruling prompted the wildlife advocates who are pushing to restore federal protections to the bears to hurriedly draft a request for a temporary restraining order that would block the opening of the Wyoming and Idaho hunts.

Tim Preso, an Earthjustice attorney representing several conservation groups and the Northern Cheyenne tribe, asked the judge to rule on the request quickly so that they can file an emergency request with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, if necessary.

Mike Garrity, the executive director for plaintiff Alliance for the Wild Rockies, it was essential for Christensen to rule before Saturday.

"It's very important because 30 minutes before sunrise on Saturday morning, people could start killing bears," Garrity said.

The advocacy groups claim the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision last year that Yellowstone grizzlies are no longer a threatened species was based on faulty science. They also say they don't trust the three states that have taken over bear management will ensure the bears' survival.

Among their arguments in court, attorneys for the groups questioned how other threatened grizzly populations in the Lower 48 states would fare if the Yellowstone bears' status changed. They also said the federal wildlife agency ignored recent spikes in overall bear deaths that, when hunting is added to the mix, could cause an unanticipated population decline.

Department of Justice attorneys said the Fish and Wildlife Service considered all the plaintiffs' arguments and proceeded with lifting protections because there is no threat of extinction to the bears now or in the foreseeable future.

"They have a lot of speculation, (but) they have very little facts," said attorney Michael Eitel.

Petersen and attorneys representing Montana and Idaho said the people most affected by the court's decision will be the farmers and ranchers who live in grizzly territory and have increasing conflicts with bears attacking livestock. Those people have been cooperative with conservation efforts, but that attitude may change if federal protections are restored, they said.

"There are westerners who have to deal with this every day and who apex-level predators in their backyard," said Cody Wisniewski, a lawyer for the Wyoming Farm Bureau.

The population of grizzlies living in Yellowstone was classified as a threatened species in 1975, when its number had fallen to 136. The Fish and Wildlife Service initially declared a successful recovery for the Yellowstone population in 2007, but a federal judge ordered protections to remain in place while wildlife officials studied whether the decline of a major food source, whitebark pine seeds, could threaten the bears' survival.

In 2017, the federal agency concluded that it had addressed all threats, and ruled that the grizzlies were no longer a threatened species needing restrictive federal protections.

That prompted six lawsuits challenging the agency's decision. Those lawsuits have been consolidated into one case that Christensen heard on Thursday.

Idaho's hunting quota is one bear. Wyoming's hunt is in two phases: Sept. 1 opens the season in an outlying area with a quota of 12 bears, and Sept. 15 starts the season in prime grizzly habitat near Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. One female or nine males can be killed in those areas.

Wildlife officials in those states say they're ready for opening day, which would be Wyoming's first grizzly hunt since 1974 and Idaho's first since 1946. Twelve hunters in Wyoming and one in Idaho have been issued licenses out of the thousands who applied.

Montana officials decided not to hold a hunt this year. Bear hunting is not allowed in Yellowstone or Grand Teton.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...cies-act/1143223002/



Judge blocks grizzly bear hunting season, for now

Doug Stanglin and Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY Published 11:36 a.m. ET Aug. 30, 2018 | Updated 8:30 p.m. ET Aug. 30, 2018



A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the opening of the first grizzly bear hunts in the Rocky Mountains in more than 40 years, as he considers whether the government was wrong to lift federal protections on the animals.

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen’s order came just two days before Idaho and Wyoming prepared to open the first grizzly bear hunting seasons in the Lower 48 states since 1974.

The order will remain in effect 14 days.

“The threat of death to individual bears posed by the scheduled hunts is sufficient” to justify a delay in the state’s hunting seasons, Christensen wrote in the order.

The move marked a victory for wildlife advocates and Native American tribes that sued over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in 2017 to lift protections for 700 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.

“We’re thrilled,” said Mike Garrity, the executive director for plaintiff Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Now the judge has time to rule without grizzly bears being killed starting Saturday morning.”



Hunters say they should be allowed to kill a small number of grizzlies because the population has grown large enough to prompt President Donald Trump’s administration to remove the animals' special protections last year.

Environmental activists argue that the hunt is unnecessary and inhumane. They want the bears to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the way a judge did in 2007.

"No one is killing a grizzly bear to eat it," said Melissa Thomasma, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, which opposes the hunt. "This is about ego.”

An appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is likely by whoever is on the losing side.

The hunters are ready. Out of thousands of applicants, 12 hunters in Wyoming and one in Idaho have been issued licenses for Saturday’s opening day. It would be Wyoming’s first hunt since 1974 and Idaho’s first since 1946.

“This is a high-stakes deadline,” said Tim Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice representing several advocacy groups and the Northern Cheyenne tribe. “We’re down to the wire.”

The restrictions were put in place in the Lower 48 states in 1975 to protect the last of the tens of thousands of bears who used to roam the territory between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains. Hunters killed most of them in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leaving about 1,700 in all of the Lower 48 states, primarily in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Alaska's population of 30,000 grizzlies is considered a distinct group.

In Yellowstone National park, the grizzly population had dwindled to just 136 before the 1975 restrictions were ordered to protect the bears and their habitat as the population recovered.

The numbers of bears matters because the legal protections can be withdrawn only if the population of bears is "self sustaining," meaning enough baby bears are born each year to offset deaths. And bears die from both natural causes and human intervention, largely when hunters kill them to protect themselves or when state wildlife officials euthanize bears that have become accustomed to humans and their garbage.


Wildlife officials in Wyoming last year killed at least 14 grizzly bears that attacked livestock or threatened humans. Hunters killed another nine bears that were threatening them, and at least one bear was killed by a car. Many of Wyoming's grizzly bears live around Grand Teton National Park outside Jackson, and photographing them from the roadside is popular with tourists.



Hunters would be banned from stalking the bears in either Teton or adjacent Yellowstone national parks, but those bears are fair game if they leave the protection of park boundaries. In all, the area in which the bears live covers about 28,000 square miles, about the size of South Carolina. An adult male grizzly can roam over an area the size of New York City.

The grizzly hunt is set to begin in two phases, one on Sept. 1 and the other on Sept. 15, and state wildlife officials say they can cancel it if the judge orders them to.

Last year's decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned management of the bears over to the three states, which agreed on a plan that set hunting quotas based on the number of deaths each year to ensure the population stays above 600 animals.

Idaho’s hunting quota is one bear. Wyoming’s hunt is in two phases: Sept. 1 opens the season in an outlying area with a quota of 12 bears, and Sept. 15 starts the season in prime grizzly habitat near Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. One female or 10 males can be killed in those areas. Montana officials decided not to hold a hunt this year.

Up to 22 bears can be killed in both seasons, although that number is unlikely because the death of one female would stop the hunt starting Sept. 15 near the national parks. Bear hunting is not allowed in Yellowstone or Grand Teton.

While the grizzly population in the "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem" is much smaller than it once was, the bears – which can grow to 700 pounds among adult males – pose an undeniable threat to people who choose to live near them, threatening people using public land and killing young elk or calves just for sport.

“It’s not being bloodthirsty. The fact of the matter is that we need to do something for the benefit of the bear," said hunting guide Sy Gilliland, a Wyoming hunting industry spokesman. “We can’t turn the clock back and remove the people from Wyoming. The bear is overflowing. He just needs to have his number trimmed back for the benefit of the species overall.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Unbelieveable.
Activist Judges overruling science based management.
Too bad hunters can't unite as well as the anti hunters do. Despite all the anti's disagreements they can come together to stop this hunt, we as hunters can't set aside our differences enough to fight them off, this will be the end of our sport and way of life if we let it.

Folks should trap some of those bears and put them in the activists and judges back yard.

follow me here.

so last year there were 23 bears killed by officials and citizens protecting themselves or others.

they want to kill 24 through hunting efforts to help alleviate that problem.

they block the hunt by Judge shopping just to stave off 24 legal hunts, but the numbers show that close to that same number will be killed any way.
the numbers also show that all the Federal criteria [written by other anti hunters] is more than met by the states which is why the hunts were allowed in the first place.

if I were one of the Tag holders and this was blocked and then allowed to go through I would be spending more time in court suing for emotional damages.

Lamar: Sorry, but your assumptions don't hold up. The 23 bears killed by officials, in defense, or by cars is unlikely to change whether a dozen or two other bears are killed. So, on average, the "incidental" bear kill will continue to be about the same.

The larger issue is whether the taking of up to 24 additional bears (and only one of them female) will negatively impact the population stability of a universe of 700 bears.

If a bear's average natural lifetime is, say, ten years (and it is probably more since most of the 700 live in the protected confines of parks), then 10% or 70 bears would die naturally. Add that to about thirty bears taken by hunters and other causes which would not have been part of the natural mortality and you have 100 out of 700 mortality per year.

If that were elephants, which take about 15 years to reach reproductivity, then the population would eventually be extirpated at that annual mortality rate. If it were rabbits or hogs, then the population would grow exponentially and quickly overrun its habitat. Since it is grizzly bears, which fall somewhere in between on the reproductive scale, the 100/700 annual mortality would appear to be a fairly stable rate -- but that depends on what happens in the habitat such as food resources and competition from other species like wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes.

In the end it should be a question answered by the best scientific data available, not by how the emotions those who would be made either happier or sadder by the taking of a grizzly through sport hunting.

That is one of Obama's judicial picks.

George

How many on here were honestly surprised by that decision?????

It would be interesting if judges would give hunters the same benefits...like put a hold on the stop of polar bear hunting until it had run its way through the courts.

Contrary to its stated image, Justice isn’t blind.

The last bear hunts in Montana allowed 25 bears to be killed.

They subtracted incidental kills from that number so each year there were actually only 1-3 tags given out.

They should word it that way again. Make it 50 bears and I bet there would still only be 1-3 tags given out.

That the antis will still protest.

quote:

Originally posted by OLBIKER:
Folks should trap some of those bears and put them in the activists and judges back yard.

Send them to Colorado, though I'm a hunter, I'd love to see them come back here

quote:

Originally posted by RMiller:
The last bear hunts in Montana allowed 25 bears to be killed.

They subtracted incidental kills from that number so each year there were actually only 1-3 tags given out.

They should word it that way again. Make it 50 bears and I bet there would still only be 1-3 tags given out.

That the antis will still protest.

Other than the one year that we had a spring hunt, which was a draw tag, the fall tags were unlimited, and the season was closed when the 25 quota "by any means" was approached.

For many years in the late 70s and early 80s I bought a grizzly tag just in case one would come in to my elk gut pile.

quote:

Originally posted by chuck375:

quote:

Originally posted by OLBIKER:
Folks should trap some of those bears and put them in the activists and judges back yard.

Send them to Colorado, though I'm a hunter, I'd love to see them come back here

There would be many who don't share your enthusiasm. Ranchers, loggers, miners and many other folks who make their living outdoors may not appreciate the company...

This USA Today story had a definite slant/bias and didn't even bring up the current population and what successes being made in Grizzly Bear numbers, the delisting by USF&W and increased number of Bear conflicts and on top of that they had the wrong National Park, they stated "Yosemite"! uh a little fact checking goes a long way to credibility, I guess that is a lost art.
I will say it again
"Activist Judges overruling science based management."

https://www.courthousenews.com...09/grizzly-hunts.pdf


Link to judge's ruling.

Not being a Lawyer it is my understanding then that by September 27th he either has to find some merit to the suit on legal grounds or let the hunt continue.

Good luck to all that may be Bear hunting by the end of the month!

https://www.ibtimes.com/yellow...e-stops-hunt-2719782



Yellowstone Grizzly Bears On Endangered Species List Again After Judge Stops Hunt

By Susmitha Suresh
09/25/18 AT 5:42 AM



On Monday, a U.S. judge reinstated legal protections for grizzly bears living in and around Yellowstone National Park, blocking the hunt planned by the Trump administration. If allowed, it would have been the first hunt planned in the lower 48 states in almost three decades.

In the ruling, the court vacated the June 30, 2017, final rule of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisting the Greater Yellowstone bear from Endangered Species Act.

Earlier, U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen twice blocked the hunt, which would have been the first hunt outside of Alaska since 1991. Wyoming and Idaho were on the verge of allowing the hunting of up to 23 bears this fall before the court stayed it. The second stay was set to expire later this week.



In the ruling, Christensen said the court was not contemplating on the ethics of hunting, but instead, the question in front of them was whether federal officials adequately considered all factors related to the species' long-term recovery before removing the bears from the endangered species list. He said the officials were “arbitrary and capricious” in their decision.


Juliet Eilperin
✔
@eilperin
NEW: A federal judge just reinstated Yellowstone grizzly bears as a threatened species under ESA, reversing Interior's 2017 decision. DOI will have to do additional scientific analysis and a revise their recovery before any hunt (like the ones ID and WY planned) can happen.

7:31 PM - Sep 24, 2018
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The judge noted around 50,000 bears used to roam the contiguous United States, adding it would be "simplistic at best and disingenuous at worst” if the officials did not consider the status of the grizzly population outside the Yellowstone region. Grizzlies still largely remain endangered around the world and in other parts of the U.S., having bounced back only in select areas like the Yellowstone region. The judge noted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service "entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem."

The ruling comes as a victory for animal rights groups, wildlife advocates and Native American tribes who sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when the protection on the bears was first lifted last year. Their argument was the animal continued to face threats from climate change and loss of habitat among other reasons.

"Putting the blinders on to everything other than Yellowstone grizzlies was illegal," Tim Preso, an attorney with EarthJustice, said. "We tried to get them to put on the brakes, but they refused to do that.”

He added the ruling made it clear the government behaved hastily while removing protection, a report by Fox News said.

“The court’s ruling resonates with the feelings of countless Americans who believe in the protection of grizzly bears, and we’re as committed as ever to making sure that this celebrated population will be spared from the cruel and excessive trophy hunt planned by the states of Wyoming and Idaho,” Kitty Block, acting president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said, reported USA Today.

According to reports, the ruling was met with disappointment among state and federal officials.

“Grizzly bear recovery should be viewed as a conservation success story," Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said, adding the ruling provided further evidence of flaws in the Endangered Species Act. He said Congress should make changes to the act.



In the recent years, as the number of human-bear conflicts increased, the pressure to lift protection on the animals to allow for hunting has also increased. Though most of these conflicts were based on attacks on livestock, sometimes, bears do attack people. The animals sometimes wander into human property as well. Many people pointed out the increase in human-bear conflicts arose due to an increase in the animal’s population, which has been recovering through the years.

In 1975, the grizzlies living in and around Yellowstone were classified as threatened when it was found the bear population was down to just 136 after most of them were killed off early in the last century.

https://earthjustice.org/sites...24_Doc-266-ORDER.pdf


Link to ruling.

So wildlife professionals acted "arbitrarily and capriciously." That from a judge who I assume knows nothing of wildlife management.

Emotion trumps science again. Who loses in the long run, our wildlife.

One more time, WHO is actually surprised by this decision??????

quote:

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen

Obozo appointee, born NY City, Stanford University.... explains everything!

quote:

Originally posted by OLBIKER:
Folks should trap some of those bears and put them in the activists and judges back yard.

The bears should be re-introduced into the eastern states where there are not enough hunters to keep the whitetail population in line. Start with Maryland...

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story about it on page A6.

The liberals are masters at dirty tricks, and totally ignorant of wildlife management, the judge shop for liberal dumb ass judges who are appointed for a life time and also have no experience with wildlife and all decisions are made soley on misguided emotion. The Bambi syndrome at its best. When all the animals are decimated by these people they will blame it on hunting and mismanagement by the state game depts..and federal wildlife will duck and run as usual..