logo
Feds to reduce grizzly monitoring in Selkirks

Feds to reduce grizzly monitoring in Selkirks

Yahoo17-05-2025

May 16—Federal grizzly bear managers plan to cut back on their monitoring efforts in the mountains of North Idaho and northeast Washington, leaving a hole in long-term efforts to keep an eye on the threatened bears.
Wayne Kasworm, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who leads monitoring for the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak grizzly populations, told state and federal wildlife officials at a meeting Thursday that his office doesn't have enough cash to maintain the summer staffing levels it has had for the past several years.
Kasworm's field staff has typically consisted of four two-person trapping teams that can catch and collar bears and four two-person DNA sampling teams to check remote hair snagging corrals and rubbing posts.
There's only enough money for three of each this year, Kasworm said.
That means he can't split the staff evenly between the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak recovery zones. Instead, he plans to assign two trapping and DNA teams to the Cabinet-Yaak and just one of each to the Selkirks.
The Selkirk crews will also have a narrow focus. They'll be stationed in North Idaho near the Canadian border and will prioritize monitoring bears in an area where their work is funded in part by the U.S. Border Patrol.
That means the rest of the Selkirks will get less attention than usual, particularly the portion of the range in northeast Washington.
"The money just isn't there," Kasworm said.
Kasworm was speaking at a meeting of the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, a coalition of state and federal government officials working toward grizzly bear recovery.
The reduction in effort doesn't completely eliminate grizzly monitoring in northeast Washington. There won't be a team that can trap bears for research, since that has typically only been done by the Fish and Wildlfie Service, but there will be crews gathering DNA samples.
The U.S. Forest Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Kalispel Tribe all have staff that build monitor hair snag corrals and rub sites. Representatives from each agency said Thursday that they plan to continue that work this summer.
Bart George, wildlife program manager for the Kalispel Tribe's Natural Resources Department, said his team will prioritize building hair snag corrals in places like the Salmo-Priest Wilderness to ensure DNA data is still being gathered.
"We're going to try to pick up the slack where we can," George said.
It's a time of uncertainty for grizzly bear managers across the West. Budget cuts and staffing reductions have taken a toll on the federal agencies involved. Meanwhile, a new framework for managing the bears hangs in the balance.
In early January, during the final days of the Biden administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a sea change in the way the agency manages the bears, which have been protected as threatened in the Lower 48 states since 1975.
The proposal called for keeping the bears listed but managing the various populations as a single unit.
Doing so would shrink the overall area where grizzlies are protected from the entire Lower 48 states to one contiguous zone covering all of Washington and large parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. But it would shift management away from decades of ecosystem-by-ecosystem goals and toward encouraging connectivity between the isolated populations.
An initial public comment period for the rule was scheduled to end in March but was extended two months. It was scheduled to end Friday.
Federal officials will now review those comments and decide how to proceed, but it's unclear exactly what will come next.
Hilary Cooley, the Fish and Wildlife Service's grizzly recovery coordinator, said during Thursday's meeting that the agency still doesn't have a confirmed director, although former Wyoming Game and Fish chief Brian Nesvik has been nominated.
"There are a lot of things that are paused until we have leadership in place to make decisions on what our priorities are," Cooley said.
She added that there's talk of major reorganization within the agency and that they expect big budget cuts. She also said a number of cooperative agreements and grant approval processes are also on hold.
The grizzly recovery team lost two longtime employees to retirements. One of them had worked directly for Kasworm, leading trapping efforts for more than three decades.
Annual trapping is how biologists get radio collars and ear tags on grizzlies in the wild. That work, in combination with remote cameras and DNA sampling, helps wildlife managers get a clear picture of the status of grizzly populations across the West.
There were once an estimated 50,000 grizzlies between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains. Today, scientists put the number at about 2,000 in the Lower 48, concentrated mostly in two large populations in and around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.
The populations Kasworm monitors are much smaller. During the meeting Thursday, he said the most recent minimum counts suggest there are at least 57 bears in the U.S. portion of the Selkirks and at least 58 bears in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem.
The Selkirk population has shown more robust growth in recent years than the Cabinet-Yaak population, which is part of the reason Kasworm has decided to put more resources toward the Cabinet-Yaak.
Kasworm said in an interview after the meeting that the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem is also larger. It includes two mountain ranges in far northwest Montana, one of which bleeds into Idaho.
Overall, Kasworm said, it's "probably twice the size" of the Selkirk recovery zone, and it requires more effort to maintain robust data collection.
Funding for grizzly monitoring comes from a variety of sources. While the recovery program is managed primarily by the Fish and Wildlife Service, it also gets money from the U.S. Forest Service. Kasworm said he has seen reductions in the funding provided by both agencies.
The U.S. Border Patrol helps pay for monitoring in the Bog Creek area of North Idaho. That arrangement was the result of the Border Patrol's request for access to part of a road near the Canadian border that had been closed to protect bears.
Kasworm said Thursday that funding hadn't arrived from the Border Patrol yet, and that he was "a little concerned" that funding might also be cut.
Private funding is preventing even deeper cuts. The Paul G. Allen Foundation awarded money to a researcher based at the University of California-Santa Cruz for a project on grizzly genetics, which is helping pay for a couple of the DNA teams working in Kasworm's area.
The foundation's money is good for multiple years. There's no predicting the future when it comes to federal funding, however.
Kasworm said losing one year of trapping in parts of the Selkirks may not end up being a big deal, but multiple years would be.
"It's not only this year," Kasworm said. "I'm even more worried about next year."
George, with the Kalispel Tribe, said the tribe might have been able to help with the funding woes had they known sooner. Knowing it's an issue, he said they'll start looking for grants and other cash to stockpile ahead of the 2026 field season to "support a full trapping effort."
Until then, the tribe will be prioritizing gathering DNA samples from hair snag corrals and rub sites in. The field work season is getting started.
"We'll be getting corrals out here in the next few weeks," George said. "Hopefully, we can find some bears."

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

North Rustico lobster fishers still facing harbour problems
North Rustico lobster fishers still facing harbour problems

Hamilton Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Hamilton Spectator

North Rustico lobster fishers still facing harbour problems

Despite the federal government having dredging completed ahead of this year's spring lobster season in North Rustico, P.E.I., fishers around the area still struggle to bring in their catches. Dredging is a process required in some harbours because tidal currents and wave action can fill in navigational channels and harbour basins with sediment. In an interview with The Guardian on June 1, Joey's Deep Sea Fishing co-owner Julie Ann Gauthier said the tides were low due to the moon phase affecting the tide conditions this past week at North Rustico Harbour. 'Same as what happened at the end of April, happened again, except we were just more aware of it,' said Gauthier recalled an April 29 incident at the harbour. To bring the incident into context, more than a dozen lobster vessels sailing in and out of North Rustico Harbour were stuck offshore for some time as they struggled to land their catches on April 29. 'Nobody did get stuck out there, but there were some days that we maybe didn't get to haul all of our traps because you had to get back to shore before the tide was going to be too low,' Gauthier said. The lobster fishermen around the area have more than enough to worry about, she said. 'Like, is our crew safe? Are we catching enough lobster? What do we need to do? Where are we moving around? All that kind of stuff,' Gauthier said. Dredging the harbour is a simple solution, she added. 'There's talk, but we haven't seen action yet. We have been working with Heath MacDonald, who is our member of Parliament here,' Gauthier said. He is also a member of the cabinet, which means he is around the table with the right people, she added. 'However, we have not yet been told what they plan. But as we phase out of lobster fishing and we phase into deep sea fishing, it continues to be a concern,' Gauthier said. Despite the problems on the water, many residents and visitors of North Rustico, P.E.I. enjoyed a public event on June 1 that was part of Ocean Week Canada, a national celebration of ocean learning, stewardship and connection. The Rustico Surf Club hosted the event in partnership with Cavendish Beach and Central Coastal Drive. Jason Woodside, a professional oyster shucker and former Canadian champion, gave a presentation at the event about sustainable oyster practices. In an interview with The Guardian, Woodside said that P.E.I., as an industry, should continue to focus on creating quality oysters. 'For years and years, the idea is people either think oysters are a food that should be cheap, like buck-a-shuck oysters, or it should be a premium high-quality product, and it should fetch top dollar,' said Woodside. We still need to appreciate that it takes that oyster grower or that oyster four to five years to get to market, he added. 'When we start appreciating the oyster and where it's from, the rest will come,' Woodside said. The nature of the oyster itself and its behavior kind of instills sustainability, he added. 'It takes a long time to grow an oyster and so we nurture and care for our oysters, of course, you know, because each one is precious and special and those oysters also only grow in special places,' Woodside said. Oysters don't just grow anywhere, said Woodside. 'They're in these very delicate places and so, we nurture those places and we sort of tend to the oysters similar to gardening in a way,' he said. Wherever the oysters are from, the person who eats them can connect with the location from which they originated, Woodside added. 'It's not just a frozen chicken breast that nobody cares about. It's about connection, feeling – people try oysters from New Zealand or Ireland or B.C. or New England, U.S.A., and it immediately connects them with that place,' he said Yutaro Sasaki is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter, a position funded by the federal government. He can be reached at ysasaki@ . Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .

If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone?
If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone?

San Francisco Chronicle​

time6 hours ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone?

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone? – Jeffrey Very few people live beyond a century. So, if no one had babies anymore, there would probably be no humans left on Earth within 100 years. But first, the population would shrink as older folks died and no one was being born. Even if all births were to suddenly cease, this decline would start slowly. Eventually there would not be enough young people coming of age to do essential work, causing societies throughout the world to quickly fall apart. Some of these breakdowns would be in humanity's ability to produce food, provide health care and do everything else we all rely on. Food would become scarce even though there would be fewer people to feed. As an anthropology professor who has spent his career studying human behavior, biology and cultures, I readily admit that this would not be a pretty picture. Eventually, civilization would crumble. It's likely that there would not be many people left within 70 or 80 years, rather than 100, due to shortages of food, clean water, prescription drugs and everything else that you can easily buy today and need to survive. Sudden change could follow a catastrophe To be sure, an abrupt halt in births is highly unlikely unless there's a global catastrophe. Here's one potential scenario, which writer Kurt Vonnegut explored in his novel 'Galapagos ': A highly contagious disease could render all people of reproductive age infertile – meaning that no one would be capable of having babies anymore. Another possibility might be a nuclear war that no one survives – a topic that's been explored in many scary movies and books. A lot of these works are science fiction involving a lot of space travel. Others seek to predict a less fanciful Earth-bound future where people can no longer reproduce easily, causing collective despair and the loss of personal freedom for those who are capable of having babies. Two of my favorite books along these lines are ' The Handmaid's Tale,' by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, and ' The Children of Men,' by British writer P.D. James. They are dystopian stories, meaning that they take place in an unpleasant future with a great deal of human suffering and disorder. And both have become the basis of television series and movies. In the 1960s and 1970s, many people also worried that there would be too many people on Earth, which would cause different kinds of catastrophes. Those scenarios also became the focus of dystopian books and movies. Heading toward 10 billion people To be sure, the number of people in the world is still growing, even though the pace of that growth has slowed down. Experts who study population changes predict that the total will peak at 10 billion in the 2080s, up from 8 billion today and 4 billion in 1974. The U.S. population currently stands at 342 million. That's about 200 million more people than were here when I was born in the 1930s. This is a lot of people, but both worldwide and in the U.S. these numbers could gradually fall if more people die than are born. About 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2024, down from 4.1 million in 2004. Meanwhile, about 3.3 million people died in 2022, up from 2.4 million 20 years earlier. One thing that will be important as these patterns change is whether there's a manageable balance between young people and older people. That's because the young often are the engine of society. They tend to be the ones to implement new ideas and produce everything we use. Also, many older people need help from younger people with basic activities, like cooking and getting dressed. And a wide range of jobs are more appropriate for people under 65 rather than those who have reached the typical age for retirement. Declining birth rates In many countries, women are having fewer children throughout their reproductive lives than used to be the case. That reduction is the most stark in several countries, including India and South Korea. The declines in birth rates occurring today are largely caused by people choosing not to have any children or as many as their parents did. That kind of population decline can be kept manageable through immigration from other countries, but cultural and political concerns often stop that from happening. At the same time, many men are becoming less able to father children due to fertility problems. If that situation gets much worse, it could contribute to a steep decline in population. Neanderthals went extinct Our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for at least 200,000 years. That's a long time, but like all animals on Earth we are at risk of becoming extinct. Consider what happened to the Neanderthals, a close relative of Homo sapiens. They first appeared at least 400,000 years ago. Our modern human ancestors overlapped for a while with the Neanderthals, who gradually declined to become extinct about 40,000 years ago. Some scientists have found evidence that modern humans were more successful at reproducing our numbers than the Neanderthal people. This occurred when Homo sapiens became more successful at providing food for their families and also having more babies than the Neanderthals. If humans were to go extinct, it could open up opportunities for other animals to flourish on Earth. On the other hand, it would be sad for humans to go away because we would lose all of the great achievements people have made, including in the arts and science. In my view, we need to take certain steps to ensure that we have a long future on our own planet. These include controlling climate change and avoiding wars. Also, we need to appreciate the fact that having a wide array of animals and plants makes the planet healthy for all creatures, including our own species. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Moonstone Beach was known for sun and buns. A look back at the end of RI's last nude beach
Moonstone Beach was known for sun and buns. A look back at the end of RI's last nude beach

Yahoo

time8 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Moonstone Beach was known for sun and buns. A look back at the end of RI's last nude beach

It's unclear when exactly Moonstone Beach became a haven for nude sunbathers. According to various reports, the stretch of sandy beach located between the beaches in the South Kingstown villages of Matunuck and Green Hill gained popularity in the 1970s and remained so into the late 1980s. Then, by the end of the century, the sun and buns would start coming to a halt. It was no joke when on April 1, 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began erecting a mile-long, 4-foot-high fence along Moonstone Beach to enclose nesting piping plovers and least terns until Aug. 31. According to Providence Journal archives, the fence closed off New England's only nude beach and South Kingstown's Town Beach during the nesting season. All that remained was a 50-foot right-of-way controlled by South Kingstown, and under the terms of the closing, which was announced earlier in 1988, the public still would be allowed on Moonstone Beach below the mean high water line – the average height of high tide – which is well below the sections of the beach where people sit. The fence left bathers with a narrow strip between the fence and the water. The decision to close most of the beach was made in the hopes of increasing the population of piping plovers by allowing them more room to nest and feed. Plovers, a shore bird that nests in the same soft sand that attracts sunbathers, became protected under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1986. Only two pairs of plovers had migrated from the south in 1985 to nest at Moonstone, and eight of their eggs were destroyed by predators drawn by refuse left by beach-goers, a representative of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. With the fence plan in place, the town also banned nudity within 200 feet of the town beach at Moonstone Beach in 1988. The efforts proved semi-successful, with seven baby plovers surviving at Moonstone during the summer of 1989. As the plan to protect the plovers was being hatched, nudists protested the decision, claiming at times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was overstepping its authority because it opposed nude sunbathing – a charge that was denied by service officials. A letter-writing effort in June 1988 appealed to reopen the beach. An attempt to challenge the fence through a court injunction that summer also failed. In fall 1989, members of the New England Naturist Association announced plans for sit-ins and other protest actions the following summer. In December 1989, fully clothed members of the New England Naturist Association picketed the local headquarters of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the hope that public pressure would force the agency to reopen the beach the following summer. While those efforts proved unsuccessful, the association was able to find some relief when, in 1990, they leased a 350-foot beach adjacent to Moonstone. Association President Joseph R. DiPippo said that since the beach opened that July, they had averaged 150 people a day during the week and 250 to 300 people a day on the weekend. That beach would remain in use until 1992. In 1993, the association purchased property in South Kingstown near the Charlestown border. That move came after another effort in 1993 by the association to lease a 32-acre peninsula on the Ninigret Pond side of the Ninigret State Conservation Area for nude sunbathing, but it was unable to get a local zoning permit. That would remain in use for two summers until the Rhode Island Supreme Court dealt a blow to the New England Naturist Association when it ruled that the clothing-optional beach violated the town's zoning regulations. The court's ruling had nothing to do with issues of nudity, but rather with a local law requiring that the beach, as a recreational facility, receive a special exception from the town's Zoning Board to operate. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown was New England's last nude beach

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store