Human encroachment, elk feedlots, and climate change increasingly are putting pressure on the survival of grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and the annual elk reduction hunt at Grand Teton National Park is an unnecessary stressor that is impacting the bears' survival in the ecosystem, according to a lawsuit filed against the National Park Service, Interior Department, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Spurring the lawsuit, which was filed late last week by Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club and Western Watersheds Project, was the decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service that it would be OK if four grizzlies were killed over the next seven years in connection with the elk hunt. The groups hope to force the agencies to withdraw the decision.

“Authorizing the killing of four grizzly bears in a national park is not good management for grizzlies or national parks,” said Earthjustice attorney Tim Preso. “The government should be working to eliminate grizzly mortality threats, not handing out authorizations to kill grizzly bears in one of our nation’s premiere national parks.”

Grizzlies were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act back in 1975. While the ecosystem's grizzly population has been growing, the impact climate change is having on whitebark pine trees, a valued source of protein-rich nuts that the bears seek in the fall, could reverse that growth, the groups note in their lawsuit. With the decline in whitebark pines, grizzlies are turning to other readily available food sources.

Until very recently, the seeds of the whitebark pine provided a critically important and nutritious food source for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone region. However, the last decade has seen catastrophic whitebark pine mortality across the Yellowstone region as warmer climatic conditions made the trees vulnerable to unprecedented attacks by the mountain pine beetle and an exotic disease called blister rust. As a result, grizzly bears abruptly have been forced to seek food elsewhere. Increasingly, bears have turned to meat as an alternative, high-quality food source, which in turn has brought grizzlies into closer and ever more frequent contact with humans, including hunters.

The agencies authorized the challenged grizzly “takings” in response to an incident on Thanksgiving Day 2012 in which three hunters participating in the Grand Teton elk hunt shot and killed an adult male grizzly bear.  Anticipating more such conflicts as the region’s grizzlies increasingly turn to meat-based food sources such as hunter-killed or wounded elk, federal officials in September 2013 approved the killing of four more grizzly bears in connection with future elk hunts in Grand Teton through the year 2022.

Much of the problem stems from the longstanding elk feed ground located to the southeast of Grand Teton, the groups maintain.

The Elk Reduction Program principally results from a misguided program of winter elk feeding by FWS on the nearby Jackson Hole National Elk Refuge. That feeding program artificially inflates the local elk population such that the extraordinary step of hunting wildlife within a national park has been deemed necessary to control the population. In recent years, the wildlife disease consequences of the elk-feeding program have come to be recognized as a threat to the local elk population that overwhelms any benefit of winter feeding. 

Nevertheless, despite promises by FWS to phase out its elk feeding program—including a promise made to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals only four years ago—the winter feeding program continues unabated, and has actually increased in recent years. 

Now, as a result of the agency actions challenged in this complaint, Grand Teton National Park’s iconic grizzly bears have been added to the list of the program’s casualties.

But the lawsuit charges that government officials failed to consider the cumulative impacts of the expected Grand Teton “takings” together with other grizzly bear mortality that federal agencies have authorized.  The authorized killing of these four grizzlies, when added to the amount of other similar grizzly  “take” determinations issued by FWS and currently in effect for other actions in the Greater Yellowstone region, could result in the killing of as many as 65 female grizzly bears in a single year, the groups claim. This level of mortality exceeds sustainable levels for female bears set by government biologists by more than three times, they add. 

"Allowing four additional grizzly bears - a threatened species - to be killed in one our nation's most iconic national parks, without even requiring significant measures to reduce conflicts between people and bears, is inexcusable," said Bonnie Rice with Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign. "The Fish and Wildlife Service has repeatedly increased the number of grizzly bears that can be killed, without looking at the broader impact on grizzly recovery in the region.”

“Throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service appears to have forgotten basic math,” added Jonathan Ratner of Western Watersheds Project.  “They have been handing out permits for the killing of grizzly bears like candy but they have conveniently forgotten to add up all of the take they have authorized.”