Ballooning Grizzly Population
Causes Increasing Stock Losses

JACKSON, Wyo. —(AP)— The success of the grizzly bear recovery project is leading to more attacks on livestock and straining the resources of state biologists in Wyoming.

A decade ago, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department responded to three incidents in which bears killed livestock. Last year, 70 incidents were investigated.

In 1989 and 1990, no grizzlies were relocated. This year, seven have been moved and one has been destroyed.

With the grizzly population growing, bears are moving into previously unoccupied areas, said Game and Fish bear biologist Mark Bruscino.

He has had to train U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel to trap and move bears because the state agency can no longer keep up with the volume of complaints.

``It's not, in my opinion, bears developing a taste for livestock,'' Bruscino said while checking on a trapped bear in the Targhee National Forest. ``It's not bears all of a sudden wandering out of the recovery zone and discovering sheep. Bears are living here.''

Bruscino, joined by federal biologists Dustin Shorma and Lee Czapenski, recently responded to a bear snared in a trap on a grazing allotment leased by Ball Brothers Livestock.

Upon arrival at the trap, Bruscino estimates the bear's weight at 450 pounds, which tells him how much tranquilizer to use.

From the cab of a truck, Czapenski shoots the bear in the shoulder. The impact startles the bear, sending it up a tree. Slowly it comes down and lays its head on a log. Within 10 minutes, the bear is asleep.

The biologists get busy. Shorma and Bruscino show Czapenski how to tag the ears and attach a collar. They tattoo a lip and extract a small tooth to determine the bear's age.

``It's pretty traumatic for them,'' Bruscino says of the trapping and relocation. But he said he hopes the experience teaches the bear to avoid humans.

As the bear begins licking its lips — a signal the tranquilizer is wearing off — the men roll the bear onto a tarp, then carry him to the bed of a truck and drive him back down a logging road to a pen. They then make plaster casts of his paw and take a vial of blood before loading him from the pickup into a cage that can be pulled on a trailer. In all, the operation takes less than two hours.

The bear will be taken to West Yellowstone, Mont., where Yellowstone National Park officials will helicopter it into the park's backcountry and release it.

``The park is the best location for livestock-killing bears because there's no livestock,'' Bruscino says.

He said he believes ranchers will be more accepting of grizzlies if agency officials respond quickly when there's trouble. But he said the state doesn't have enough staff or funding to keep up with the increasing calls.

As the demand to trap and relocate rises, Bruscino says the public will face tough decisions about what purpose federal lands should serve.

``There's going to have to be a decision on where we want grizzlies in huge numbers, and where we don't,'' he said.