Adult grizzly bears average 400 pounds, can outrun a horse in short bursts and ruled the wilds of Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains until white men came with guns and traps to wipe them out.
The return of the huge omnivores to a swath of mountain range larger than Connecticut is a chilling idea to some people. So biologists and conservationists say the success of a Bitterroots grizzly recovery project depends on teaching the public about the bears and how to live with them."Certainly, the more people know, the less they have to fear," Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist Steve Nadeau said.
"They'll understand there's a wildness out there, but it's a different kind of wildness than before. Most people who are presently opposed to the bears are opposed because of the fear of danger or fear of potential conflicts with resource-extractive industries."
Nadeau is on a panel developing a draft environmental impact statement on grizzly recovery in the Bitterroots, a mountain range straddling the northcentral Idaho-Montana border. The statement is expected out this spring, and the bears could be brought to the Bitterroots starting in 1997.
Options range from natural recolonization by animals from extreme northern Idaho and Montana to accelerated transplanting of Canadian bears with full federal protection.
Another alternative is establishing an experimental, designated "non-essential" population of bears brought in from British Columbia. About a half-dozen would be moved in each year, and grizzlies that threaten humans or property would be moved or killed. The recovery area could take up the entire 5,500-square-mile Bitterroot ecosystem.
Nadeau said the final grizzly population would be less than 400. In contrast, there are 11,000 black bears in the area and 1,000 are harvested each year.
"The introduction of the grizzly bears will hardly be a blip on the screen," he said.
Sen. Laird Noh of Kimberly, the Resources and Environment Committee chairman, has collected research on the grizzly, visited with bear experts and even traveled to Yellowstone National Park to observe them. The sheep rancher also serves on a legislative oversight committee on grizzlies.
Noh and other Idaho leaders worry that recreationists, loggers and ranchers will have to watch their backs while in the field.
"As a stockman, I have my own opinion," he said. "As a legislator my concerns are even greater for outdoor recreation and people and families who like to camp and hike and pick berries.
"The grizzly bear has an enormous effect. The people will just stay away from the area. To me that's a real policy impact."
The Legislature refused to sign on to the federal wolf reintroduction effort last January, precluding Idaho Fish and Game from overseeing the program. It is unclear whether lawmakers will debate the grizzly issue this session.
"If you read the Endangered Species Act and its rules, any place where an endangered species goes on public land, it is fully protected," Noh said.
Special rules can be set giving experimental, non-essential populations less than complete protection, but the offspring of those bears would be fully protected on public lands, he said.
"So it's very difficult when you've got a creature like the grizzly bear to draw a line around what may be an adequate volume of habitat for a certain number of bears and say, `That's it.' "
Noh said that in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, outdoorsmen must keep their food in stainless-steel containers so grizzlies can't detect it. They are advised against sleeping in the same clothes they cook in, and nearby towns have installed electric fences to keep grizzlies out of their landfills.
But Nadeau, who spent five years researching grizzlies in Glacier National Park, said grizzly fear is unreasonable. He has had 30 close encounters with grizzlies.
"I've stepped between females and their cubs. It's incredible what the bears have let me do," he said. "The fear of grizzlies is blown out of proportion because a (bear-caused) death is front-page news, while a car accident isn't."
Nine people were killed by grizzlies in Glacier National Park from 1913 through 1993. During the same period, 200 people died there from falls, drownings, heart attacks and other mishaps. In the Bob Marshall Wilderness, one bear-caused death and fewer than five maulings occurred in 50 years.