The proposed Selway-Bitterroot Grizzly Recovery Project is receiving opposition from 48 new environmental groups.New concerns about the project have been received by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but not from Montana groups, or even organizations in the United States. Canadian environmental groups are attempting to ensure their voices get heard.
The organizations sent letters to the Premiers of Bntish Columbia and Alberta, as well as the director of the United States explaining their points of opposition to the proposals that will soon be unveiled by the USFWS
The Canadians would like assurance that the relocated bears will not only survive, but make a meaningful, long-term contribution to grizzly bear recovery in the Selway-Bitterroot. In addition. they are concerned about how the loss of their grizzly bears, which will be used in the reintroduction, will effect their own bear population.
"We are not opposed to the concept of reintroduction, or the idea of Canadian bears being used for the project," said Mike Sawyer of the Rocky Mountain Ecosystem Coalition one of the groups involved. "We don t believe that the proposal is adequate enough to insure the bears' safety and the area being proposed is simply not big enough and the land already has too many pressures on it."
Canada does not have the stringent environmental laws set by the United States Sawyer says. And according to Sawyer's studies, the nation has lost on average of 3.7 percent of bear habitat each year since 1970.
"If we don't have habitat, we don't have bears," Sawyer said.
The groups would like the USFWS to conduct a scientific review of the status of Canadian grizzly bear populations and provide opportunities for Canadian citizens to have input into the use of Canadian grizzly bears for U S reintroduction programs
"We need the American public, and U.S. government agencies to understand that Canadian grizzly bear populations can not provide unlimited support for U.S. reintroduction programs. The same pressures - road building, resource extraction. urban settlement - that have put U.S. grizzlies on the endangered list also threaten Canadian bear's. We are losing habitat at an unprecedented rate." Lesley Giroday of the East Kootenai Environmental Society said.
The groups said they want assurances that any bear's translocated would contribute to the establishment and persistence of a healthy, viable population. In addition, they would like assurance that source populations would not be detrimentally affected and that all decisions regarding those populations would be based on the best available science.
The proposed recovery efforts would require the removal of three to six grizzlies per year for five year's, which would likely be taken out of the Rocky Mountain or Kootenal regions of British Columbia.