A CAST OF
CHARACTERS Grizzly bears loom largest in the mind. Montana’s state mammal, the mascot of its first university, the foe in “Night of the Grizzlies,” rarely reveals itself to its infatuated fans. Even the close-knit contingent of people who’ve spent their entire careers tracking the grizzly’s 43-year trek from endangered species to potentially recovered predator meet the bear mostly on paper.
They both helped train Chris Servheen, who once exercised the golden eagles John Craighead kept at the base of Missoula’s Mount Sentinel. He in turn relied on the ursine instincts of people like Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Bear Manager Jamie Jonkel, Chuck’s son.
Grizzly Warriors
NEVER GIVE UP
More grizzlies live in Montana than any other state in the Lower 48. The lot of them might fill all the beds in Eureka, population 1,037. Since 1970, grizzlies have killed approximately 20 humans in the continental United States. Since November 2017, at least 33 Montanans have died of influenza. Last year also saw grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem removed from Endangered Species Act protection. That move faces at least half a dozen legal challenges. The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem’s (NCDE) roughly 1,000 grizzlies could be taken off the endangered list before the end of 2018. Some see that as the crowning triumph of wildlife recovery. Others see cynical abandonment of a duty to defend a species too scary to tolerate. Read any of the dozens of books written about grizzly bears since they became an endangered species in 1975, and the same cast of characters repeatedly appears. Many studied under the wings of Dick Knight and Chuck Jonkel. Knight had picked up the pieces of grizzly research in 1975 from the rubble left after Yellowstone National Park officials abruptly shut down Frank and John Craighead’s 12-year grizzly study in 1969. Meanwhile, Jonkel launched the Border Grizzly Study west of Glacier National Park.
For four decades, this tiny band of grizzly bear recovery specialists has wrestled with an equally tight pack of critics. They include Keith Hammer, a logger-turned-wilderness advocate who consistently convinced courts to demand stronger protections for the grizzly than Servheen and the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) proposed. A very different side of the wildlife conservation world argues the grizzly has long exceeded its recovery goals. Hunters like Missoula author Susan Reneau say it’s time to declare the effort a success and return grizzlies to state management. Behind them all lurks the presence of people like Doug Peacock, real-life inspiration of the Monkey Wrench Gang and chronicler of fearsome encounters with the grizzly on its own grounds. Anyone who’s witnessed a grizzly bear demonstrate its power never forgets that moment. In his book “The Essential Grizzly,” Peacock observed “those who weathered the encounters (with grizzly bears) came away complete in soul and utterly alive ... You ferreted out the bear to get something, and if you survived, you gained wisdom and power.” One of Kate Kendall’s first encounters with that power made her question the wisdom of her mission. She stayed on, though, and revolutionized the way we count grizzly bears in northwest Montana without ever touching one.
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