Page 14 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest By threatening to withdraw funding for grizzly bear management in the state, Governor Mead finally got his way. “We have been working for several years with the Secretary of Interior and the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service one on one, along with our staffs to get to this decision. The proposed rule is to delist grizzly bears. Grizzly bears are recovered and have been for more than a decade,” pronounced Mead triumphantly. “Grizzly bears have exceeded all recovery goals. Delisting the grizzly bear is good for the species, for Wyoming and for the West,” he added, which is at best subjective, and will be proven to be demonstrably false. Mead asserts that FWS has “committed to complete delisting by the end of the summer,” the timeframe WGFD needs to begin trophy hunts in 2017. “Science has shown that the grizzly bear has been recovered for years and it has become ever more evident as the bears have spread far beyond the intended ranges,” expounded Congresswoman Lummis, an interesting conclusion, given that the name Lummis and the term science form an oxymoron, and the “intended range” of the grizzly bear can only be defined by its historic range, which was from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, not a parcel of Greater Yellowstone away from the politico-come-ranch magnet’s cows. 14