Page 19 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest population and that its ideal was 500. An obstacle to a previous proposed delisting rule was Wyoming’s insistence on FWS permitting the state to kill 12% of the existent grizzlies within its borders. At the time, that was considered a cull not a trophy hunt, but if FWS’s fluctuating population estimates are accepted, the MOA is in line with that figure. Unsurprisingly, the state’s 2016 plan once again reads more like a treatise for trophy hunters than a management program, with .30-06 caliber ordinance as the principal conflict resolution strategy, and grizzlies to be confined to their DMA reservation, as beyond that line their presence is “socially unacceptable.” Post-delisting, Wyoming is committed to hunting grizzlies and facilitating that management option “within the range stipulated” in the Demographic Recovery Criterion, the second article of which is a harbinger for the Great Bear. Population and stability will be inferred if, “Sixteen of 18 grizzly bear management units within the Recovery Zone” are occupied by “females with young.” At first glance that may sound reasonable, until it is explained that “females” can actually be singular, and that a unit will be considered occupied even if that sole female and her cub are only observed in that unit “1 year of each 6-year period.” 19