CAG Inc. Comment
December 2000 Advertisement supplement in the Missoulian, also published in Boise & Lewiston, ID: Grizzly Bear Recovery in the Selway Bitterroot Ecosystem [SBE] -- What does it mean to you? by Ralph Morgenweck, Regional Director, Mountain-Prairie Region, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. You can obtain a copy of this advertisment by contacting the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Missoula, Dr. Chris Servheen or possibily by contacting the Missoulian in Missoula, MT or the major newspapers in Boise & Lewiston, ID.
Ralph Morgenweck and the Interagency Grizzly Bear introduction [reintroduction] Committee [IGBRC] should spend more time interviewing people that have lived in the SBE and had a burning interest in the types of predators that were present in their front and back yards; people, for the most part, that understood the limitations of the environment and its ability to support major omnivores.
The IGBRC maintains there were grizzly bears in the SBE before the arrivial of the Europeans, but according to Lewis & Clark they only saw grizzly bears along the rivers of the great plains.
For example, from the book, UNDAUNTED COURAGE written by Stephen E,. Anbrose it is noted, in the paperback edition, on pages 177-178 "...A few days later, on October 20, in the vicinity of present Fort Lincoln State Park, across the river from Bismarck, North Dakota, Private Cruzatte was the first to encounter a grizzly bear, called a white bear by the Americans. They had heard about the grizzly, and knew the Indians were afraid of the bear, which according to rumor was gigantic in size (Clark had recently seen a footprint and pronounced it by far the biggest he had ever seen) and frecocious in behavior. The men of the expedition, naturally, were eager to get a look and a shot at it. Cruzatte was the lucky one--except, as Lewis dryly recorded in his field notes, "he wounded him, but being alarmed at the formidable appearance of the bear he left his tomahawk and gun..."...pages 218-219..."Lewis had seen the first grizzly sign on April 13. "The men as well as ourselves are anxious to meet with some of these bear," he then recorded. The Indians had given the white men "a very formidable account of the strengh -and ferocity of this animal]," but Lewis had discounted the inforrnatlon, because the Indians had only bows and arrows or "the indifferent guns with which the traders furnish them, with these they shoot with such uncertainty and at so short a distance that they frequently mis their aim & fall a sacrefice to the bear." It gave him a bit of pause that the Indians, before attacking a grizzly, went through all the rituals they commonly used before going on a war party; still, he, Clark, and the men had faith in their long rifles and were eager to challenge the grizzly.
On April 29, Lewis was walking on shore with one man when they spotted two grizzlies. Each man fired and hit a bear, One of the wounded beasts escaped, but the other charged Lewis, pursuing him some eighty yards. Fortunately, the bear was badly enough wounded so that Lewis and the private had time to reload. They shot again and killed it. Though not full-grown, it weighed three hundred pounds. Lewis described it as a "much more furious and formidable anamal" than the black bear of the eastern United States. "It is asstonishing to see the wounds they will bear before they can be put to death," he admitted, but he remained cocky: the Indians "may well fear this anamal ... but in the hands of skillful! riflemen (the bears] are by no means as formidable or dangerous" as the Indians indicated.
On May 5, his cockiness began to fade. Clark and Drouillard killed a grizzly. Lewis described it as "a most trernendious looking anamal, and extreemly hard to kill notwithstanding he had five balls through his lungs and five others in various parts he swam more than half the distance across the river to a sandbar & it was at least twenty minutes before he died; [he] made the most tremendous roaring from the moment he was shot."
The expedition had no equipment with which to weigh the bear. Clark thought he would go five hundred pounds; Lewis thought six. This was their first disagreement. They boiled the oil and put it in a cask; it was as hard as hog's lard.
A week later, the party saw a grizzly swim the river. He disappeared before an attack could be made on him. Lewis wrote, "I find that the curiossity of our party is pretty welt satisfyed with rispect to this anamal" The size of the beast, and the difficulty in killing the bear, "has staggered the resolution [of) several of them, others however seem keen for action with the bear; I expect these gentlemen will give us some amusement shotly as they soon begin now to coppolate."...page 224 "...At about 5:00 p.m. on May 11, Private William Bratton came running along the bank, shouting and making signs. Lewis ordered the pirogue to put to. Bratton was so out of breath when he came up that it was some minutes before he could explain that he had shot and wounded a grizzly, but the bear had turned on him and pursued him a considerable distance.
Lewis was not about to allow a bear to defeat one of his men so ignominiously or so completely. He ordered the crew of the white pirogue to join him on an expedition "in quest of this monster." Finding a trail of blood, they pursued the bear for a mile through thick brush before finding him concealed. They shot him through the head, twice. Examination disclosed that Bratton's shot had gone through the bear's lungs, "notwithstanding which he [the bear] had pursued him [E Bratton] near half a mile and had returned more than double that distance."
Lewis concluded, "these bear being so hard to die reather intimedates us all; I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had reather fight two Indians than one bear."
Three days later, there was another battle between bear and party. The six men in the two rear canoes saw a bear on the bank. They put to shore and planned their attack in some detail. They sneaked up to within forty yards of the enemy without being spotted. Four men fired simultaneously, while two soldiers held their rifles in reserve. All four balls hit the mark, two passing through the lungs. The bear rose with a roar and launched an immediate counterattack, charging with open mouth. The two-man reserve force fired; one ball hit muscle only, but the other broke the bear's shoulder; this, however, only slowed him for an instant.
The men took to flight. The bear pursued down to the river, where two men got away in the canoe while the remainder took to hiding places in the willows, to reload and fire. They hit the bear several more times, but that only let him know where they were hidden. He routed two of the men, who threw away their rifles and pouches and dived into the river, from a perpendicular bank of near twenty feet. The bear jumped in after them. He was about to reach one of the swimmers when a soldier on the bank finally shot him through the head and killed him. Examination revealed that eight balls had passed through the bear...pages 246-247...July 4... Lewis was fortunate to have at hand a worthy object for his frustration and pent-up energy. "The bear were about our camp all last night," he concluded his July 1 journal entry. "We have therefore determined to beat up their quarters tomorrow, and kill them or drive them from their haunts about this place."
At 8:15 a.rn., after Lewis had measured the altitude of the sun, he and Clark led a twelve-man squad in an attack. They crossed to the largest of the islands and went through the brush in three-man teams. "We found only one," Lewis reported, "which made at Drewyer and he shot him in the brest at the distance of about 20 feet, the ball fortunately passed through his heart, the stroke knocked the bear down and gave Drewyer time to get out of his sight; the bear changed his course we pursued him about a hundred yards by the blood and found him dead." The soldiers were disappointed at finding only one of the enemy, but at least they had suffered no losses...The Fourth of July was a working day for the Corps of Discovery. Lewis had the men turn the boat and put her on a scaffold, then had small fires build underneath the craft to dry her.
That evening, the first Americans ever to enter Montana, the first ever to see the Yellowstone, the Milk, the Marias, and the Great Fails, the first Americans ever to kill a grizzly, celebrated their nation's twenty-ninth birthday. The captains gave the men a gill of whiskey—the last of the stock—"and some of them appeared a little sensible of it's effects." Cruzatte played the fiddle and the men danced "very merrily" until a 9:00 p.m. thunderstorm put an end to it. Even so, the men "continued their mirth with songs and festive jokes and were extreemly merry untill late at night."...page 294...The horses, in a near-starvation situation, strayed during the night, searching for grass. It took the whole morning to find and bring them in. Not until 1:00 p.m. did the expedition set out. The road was "excessively bad" and the party made only ten miles. It camped at a "Sinque hole full of water." The hunters had managed to kill only a few grouse, insufficient for supper. This "compelled us to kill something. a colt being the most useless part of our Stock he fell a Prey to our appetites." That was the last of the colts.
The captains talked. The men's spirits were low. They were approaching the limits of physical endurance. The food supply was all but gone, and there was no hope of finding game. Lewis and Clark realized that the men—and they themselves—had reached a breaking point.
But to retreat was unthinkable—they would rather die than quit—and in any case impractical, for the five-day journey back to the Bitterroot River was probably beyond their capabilities. They had to go on. But to do so required desperate measures.
The captains concluded that in the morning Clark would go ahead with six hunters—in Lewis's words, to "hurry on to the leavel country a head and there hunt and provide some provision" to send back to the main party, which would follow under Lewis's leadership. They hated to split up—in the past seventeen months, they had done so only during the Marias River exploration and in the search for the Shoshones—especially in these god-awful mountains, with no firm idea as to how far ahead the "leavel country" might be.
On the morning of September 18, Clark struck out at first light. That day. Lewis resumed writing in his journal (he had done so only twice in the past three weeks, for unknown reasons; evidently he did so now to maintain a final record of the journey). He ordered the horses brought in early, "to force my march as much as the abilities of our horses would permit." Unfortunately. Private Alexander Willard allowed his horse to stray. Lewis sent him to search for it while the men ate what was left of the colt for breakfast, At 8:30 arn.. the party got started (Willard rejoined the men late that afternoon, without his horse). Lewis made eighteen miles that day and camped on the side of a steep mountain. He broke out "a skant proportion" of the portable soup, "a few canesters of which, a little bears oil and about 20 Lbs. of candles form our stoci of provision."
The situation was critical, Lewis wrote, "the only recourses being our gun & packhorses." Killing the packhorses would mean abandoning most of the baggage they were carrying, unthinkable with the Pacific still so far away, not to mention the return trip, and the rifles were "but a poor dependance [in countryl where there is nothing upon earth exept ourselves and a few small pheasants [grouse], smalll grey Squirrels, and a blue bird of the vulter kind [either the pinyon jay or Steller's jay]."..."
By the above account is it safe to say that the SBE has not been the home of grizzly bears even though the IGBRC maintains that the pioneers drove the grizzly bear out of the SBE and killed them.
Actually the SBE and the Bitterroot mountains almost put the Lewis & Clark expedition out-of-business. They would have welcomed a few grizzly bears that they could kill for food at this point in their journey.
Charles Duus a WWII POW, has dreamed of writing a book and it has finally happened, a book called "SOARING WITH EAGLES" in which he reports 9 years of interviews with folks who lived and/or worked in the SBE and never saw grizzly bears or signs of grizzly bears in spite of what is reported by Ralph Morgenweck and the IGBRC.
In fact an old timer named Bud Moore wrote a letter that is included in the advertisment by the IAGBRC for the purpose of allaying fears of modern day residents that grizzly bears would come down into the valleys.
Bud Moore readily admits he has never seen nor shot a grizzly bear in the SBE -- strange that the IGBRC would site his letter when there is available over 50 people that lived and/or worked in the SBE most of their lives and never mentioned grizzly bears in their comments.
Who are these people? The following is a partial list of those companies & individuals:
CAG maintains the upshot of the introduction [reintroduction] will be the grizzly bears will leave the SBE, in an effort to find food, and invade the lower valleys where all the people live, i.e., (West Fork of Bitterroot), Sula, Connor, Darby, Hamilton, Corvallis, Victor, Stevensville and Florence, not to mention the thousands of residences strung out along the eastern front of the SBE from Forence to Nez Perce Pass. Subsequently, this action by the IAGBRC will produce conflicts between the grizzly bear and humans and subsequently between humans and the Endangered Species Act and as Senator Conrad Burns pointed out several years ago the Citizen's Management Committes is just so much window dressing.
End CAG Comment
Dear Reader, [Notes in the following text by CAG are in red]
Grizzly bears are a part of America
's rich wildlife heritage and once ranged throughout most of the western United States [The river bottoms on the Great Plains was their natural habitat where there was a plentiful supply of ungulates and succulent flora as food sources that gives them the classification of being omnivores. Grizzly bears were forced into the mountains. It is not their natural habitat even though in one publication it is reported that Dr. Chris Servheen asserts, "The only reason the bears are gone now is that we killed them all. The foods are still there!" NOT A TRUE STATEMENT, the foodbase was never there! In fact, the Indian populations, at least the Shoshones and Nez Perc nations, close to the continental divide, made hazardous trips across that divide to the Great Plains to hunt buffalo, preserve the meat and hides and bring them back to their homes on the western side of the divide]. However, distribution and population levels of this species have been diminished due to loss of habitat and eradication by people. Grizzly bears have been eliminated from all but approximately 2 percent of their historic range the lower 48 States. Today, only 1.000 to 1,100 grizzly bears remain in a few populations in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington. [A noted and respected grizzly bear biologist points out that 3000 grizzly bears is an indicator of a "healthy population", not the 280 to 300 grizzly bears as proposed by the IAGBRC.]The final steps needed to begin recovery efforts for the grizzly bear in the Bitterroot Ecosystem of central Idaho and western Montana are now complete. The signing of both the Record of Decision which officially states what alternative the Service has selected to help recover grizzly bears in the Bitterroot, and the final rule which specifically describes how the Service will implement this alternative, begins the lengthy recovery process.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in March 2000 which detailed our final proposal and alternative proposals to recover a population of grizzly bears in the Bitterroot Ecosystem. After review of over 14,000 public comments received on the FEIS, we have prepared and signed a Record of Decision. The alternative that we have selected for implementation is Alternative 1, "Restoration of Grizzly Bears As a Nonessential Experimental Population with Citizen Management." The final special rule which specifically describes how the Service will implement the selected alternative has also been signed. Both documents have been published in the Federal Register.
Our goal in this newspaper is to share with you the important points of this grizzly bear recovery project, and to explain how they may impact you. We focus on the substantive public issues that you have raised throughout our planning process for this project, and provide information to help address your questions and concerns related to these issues.
We know that citizens hold many different viewpoints about grizzly bears and how to manage them. We have listened intently to your ideas and concerns, and have incorporated them throughout the planning process as modifications to our proposal. The final plan provides the best balance possible given the broad spectrum of viewpoints on this recovery project, and our responsibility to manage this species. [Science holds many different viewpoints about the wisdom of introduction [reintroduction] of grizzly bears into the SBE and that wisdom says it is condemming the grizzly bear to a miserable life in an area that is not their traditional home.]
We encourage you to read on, and to continue to participate in this project as it is implemented. [CAG encourages you to pursue the website and see the many reasons why grizzly bear introduction [reintroduction] into the SBE is a flawed idea and is not in the best interest of the grizzly bears and certainaly not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States
On 01/06/01, the Clinton/Gore administration dedicated more National Monuments. In addition it was announced that 3000 jobs would be created here in Montana. Apparently this is viewed, somehow in the eyes of the administration, to compensate for the lack of access to our National Forest land for renewable resource extraction now that we are hauling dead charred trees from our state and private land that is only a small percentage of what was destroyed in the wildfires that were, for the most part, the results of a failed environmental management program by the Clinton/Gore administration.
Kathleen Marquardt was correct in her RETURN TO EDEN OR TICKET TO HELL, written in the early days of the Clinton/Gore administration, that the proposed environmental management plan would result in destruction of our federal renewable resources and a style of government that is behaving more and more like a totalitarian communist regime -- and all in the name of saving the environment.
MANAGE FEDERAL LAND OR LOSE THEM!
Sincerely,
Ralph Morgenweck
Regional Director, Mountain-Prairie Region
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service