Editorial: Bearing down on wildlife

Saturday, March 25, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

In tourist lingo, it's called a "bear jam" - the line of cars and motor homes packed along both sides of a skinny national park road and the cluster of people with cameras at the ready in hopes the bear spotted in the distance will move a bit closer.

They jockey for position and ask one another, "Is it a grizzly?" Oh, for the chance to see one for real, rather than on a poster or in an IMAX theater. For many visitors to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and other national parks in the West, seeing an honest-to-goodness grizzly is the highlight of a vacation to a place thousands of people may visit only once in a lifetime.

Experts say about 100,000 of the hulking, flat-faced, hump-backed beasts once roamed a region extending from the grassy Great Plains to the Pacific coast, and from Canada to Mexico.

Habitat encroachment by humans has gradually pushed grizzlies into the higher, more remote reaches of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. And it is that region, in an area called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where grizzlies are making their last stand in the Lower 48. They had dwindled to fewer than 1,000 in the 1970s and were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in November declared the grizzly recovered, saying the estimated 600 now living in a 6-million-acre region in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks is enough to warrant dropping the grizzly from its protection as a threatened species, allowing it to once again be hunted for sport or shot as a nuisance to livestock.

Before the public comment period on this proposal closed Monday, more than 250 scientists and wildlife experts submitted a letter opposing a plan to remove the bear from the list, saying a population of at least 2,000 is needed to maintain genetic integrity and withstand variations in food sources. And at least three experts questioned the accuracy of the agency's population estimates.

The protection offered under the Endangered Species Act has resulted in recovery of, among other species, the bald eagle, which also is recommended for removal from the list. It should be good news when a species is removed because it shows that the law works as it is written.

But it seems too early to take this vital protection away from the grizzly. We hope federal wildlife officials will heed the advice of these scientists and wait a while longer.