Grizzly Bears' Neighbors Say
Feds Brush Off Their Concerns

MISSOULA, Mont. —(AP)— Dusty Crary told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee here last week that federal officials responsible for grizzly bear recovery apparently aren't interested in concerns of Rocky Mountain Front residents who have to live with the animals.

Just once, Crary said, he would like one of the bear managers to sit down at his kitchen table and have a cup of coffee with him, and so would 99 percent of his neighbors.

"Wouldn't you like to know how we feel about all these grizzly bears showing up on our land?" Crary asked the assembled federal, state and tribal land and wildlife managers.

Crary lives in one of the few places in the world where grizzly bears still inhabit the prairie grassland, said Mike Madel, a bear management specialist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The bears follow the river bottoms from the mountains out onto the plains, as far as 30 miles.

Every year, he said, there are more bears further out on the plains.

Farmers and ranchers are tolerant people, Madel said, but they don't want grizzly bears in their back yards.

"People don't realize, this is my space, this is my yard," said Leanne Hayne, who ranches 3000 acres outside Dupuyer with her husband John. "My children can't roam the creek bottoms like my husband and I did when we were children. My mother lives in town, and she's afraid to go to the garage at night."

"We are 13 or 14 miles from the mountains, and we had four or five grizzlies in our yard this year," John Hayne said. "We take it as a threat. The bears are invading our territory."

"Our community is not money-driven," his wife said. "We are lifestyle-driven. And now I have grizzly bears in my yard in the summer. My children can't sleep out anymore because there are bears by the back door and by the trampoline. I'm afraid of them."

The ranchers came to the committee's winter meeting at the behest of Madel and Tim Manley, also an FWP bear management specialist. Madel helps landowners east of the Continental Divide live with grizzlies. Manley does the same west of the Divide.

Crary, whose ranch is on the Teton River near Choteau, said he doesn't mind having grizzlies on his place. He has, in fact, protected it with a conservation easement so his children will be able to see grizzly bears.

"But have you ever addressed what kind of bears you want to have?" Crary asked. "A bear that's been captured two or three times and has a radio collar and blue streamers in his ears is not a wild bear. He's a circus animal. He's a sideshow."

Crary said he no longer calves on the river bottom, so he doesn't attract grizzly bears. Hayne said he protected some of his sheep with electric fencing. "A lot of electric fence," he said.

Madel told of other ranchers who use noise makers to shoo grizzlies away from grain and electric fences to keep bears out of their beehives. No one, he said, leaves livestock carrion out like they once did.

West of the Divide, the problem is more often bears in garages and at bird feeders in rural subdivisions, Manley said. "There, too, we are asking people to change their lifestyles. There, too, most people like the wildlife, but don't want grizzly bears in their back yard."

One committee member asked about possible payment to landowners for letting the bears live on their land, and Leanne Hayne replied, "It's not about money."

Another asked about the government putting an electric fence around the yard.

"I could move to Missoula and have a little yard," Hayne said. "But my space is a 3000-acre piece of land that also happens to be prime grizzly bear habitat.

"You could electric fence the entire 3,000 acres," she said. "That would make me happy. But it would have to be a very high fence."