March 14, 1999 Missioulian article: Burns and Craig ignore many key details By STERLING MILLER (Sterling Miller is senior wildlife biologist in the Northern Rockies office of the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula.)  CAG apoligizes for all the hot links and comments in this article. Inconsistencies  makes it necessary.

Mr. Miller indicts Senator Burns and Craig while ignoring the facts that required a study be initiated that would, hopefully, get to the truth, namely:

1. Lewis & Clark never encountered grizzly bears in the SBE at the beginning of the 19th Century.
2. Wilderness covered with poor soil.
3. Grizzly bears need a moist environment.
4. Salmon and Steelhead gone from Wilderness.
5. Mature white bark pine in very short supply.
6. White bark pine in rapid decline.
7. Remotely sensed maps' "application" becomes pseudo science.
8. Grizzlies bears should have persisted in the Bitterroot Ecosystem in the face of civilization.
9. "1000 to 3000 bears are more realistic figures," Dr. Craighead says.
10. Steve P. Mealy, Director of Rocky Mtn Elk Foundation, says grizzly introduction or reintroduction not a wise move.

Science is not a smorgasbord from which you can choose a little here, a little there, and a lot of your favorite dessert. But this is exactly what Sens. Conrad Burns of Montana and Larry Craig of Idaho are trying to do with a recent analysis of grizzly bear habitat in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.

Two years ago, Burns and Craig asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to estimate how many grizzly bears the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness could support. To answer this question, FWS commissioned a study that it released two weeks ago. The study found there was abundant bear habitat in the Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church wilderness areas, and that, along with the upper Clearwater Basin, the region could ultimately support a population of more than 300 grizzlies.

Rather than accept the full results of the study they commissioned, Burns and Craig have selected only the results they like best off the menu of the study's findings. They don't like, for example, the conclusion that the Selway Bitterroot can support a robust population of bears or that reintroducing bears into the area will substantially improve the odds of protecting grizzly populations over time. What they do like is an analysis in the study that they assert says there is only a one-in-one-million chance that existing grizzly populations in the Northern Rockies will go extinct in the next 100 years. Under the guise of this science, Burns and Craig go on to claim that grizzlies should immediately be delisted from the Endangered Species Act.

Sens. Craig and Burns base their position on a complicated set of equations that the FWS study developed to evaluate how much difference having a population of bears in the Selway Bitterroot would have on the overall likelihood of grizzly bear extinction.

While these calculations do show there is a mathematically small possibility that all four of the existing bear populations in the Northern Rockies will go totally extinct in the next 100 years, the calculations demonstrate that addition of a population in the Bitterroots significantly increases the likelihood that grizzly bears will still be here in 100 years.

While it's no great crime to sneak a little extra dessert or to single out the facts one likes best, the senators should not pretend to have eaten a balanced meal or argue that their preferential selection among the results offers a balanced View of the science. This is especially true in the Selway Bitterroot grizzly debate where both science and the scientific community strongly support the reintroduction of grizzly bears.

Since 1977, for example, there have been five scientific studies undertaken to determine whether good grizzly habitat exists in the Selway-Bitterroot. The recent FWS report; like all the others, concluded that good habitat exists and that it is well distributed throughout the reintroduction area, from north to south and east to west. No study so far has concluded that the habitat is inadequate. Similarly, every scientific association that has studied the grizzly reintroduction program proposed for the Selway Bitterroot has strongly endorsed reestablishing a bear population in the area. To name just three of these professional groups, The Wildlife Society, the International Association for Bear Research and Management, and the American Society of Mammologists have all confirmed the wisdom of reintroducing grizzly bears to the Selway Bitterroot. As the detailed comments of these scientists show, they have considered not just one, but many facts before reaching their conclusions.

The reintroduction of grizzlies into the Selway Bitterroot is only partially a scientific question. Indeed, the National Wildlife Federation and other organizations have worked hard to address other issues surrounding grizzly management in Idaho and Montana. But politicians are not responsibly moving the debate forward if they pick and choose only the science they like best, without reporting the unanimous conclusions that scientists have reached supporting the Selway Bitterroot grizzly bear program.