For years, the workers and companies that make up the Idaho timber industry have bitterly opposed environmentalists on most issues, particularly those that involve endangered species.
That is why active support by the timber industry and labor for a controversial proposal to reintroduce grizzly bears into a huge chunk of western Montana and eastern Idaho has muddled the traditional battle lines."We cannot make the recovery plan go away," said Bill Mulligan, president of Three Rivers Timber in Kamiah, Idaho, whose company supports bringing bears back to the Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness complex. "There's no sense fighting it. That's why we're picking the ball up where it is and going with it."
The compromise agreement, if adopted in an environmental impact statement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, could chart a new course for the management of endangered species. Instead of giving federal officials the power to make unilateral decisions, the proposal would set up a management committee made up of citizens and state officials.
"We hear again and again: `We're not afraid of grizzly bears; we're afraid of the federal government,' " said Tom France, a lawyer for the National Wildlife Federation, which is part of the agreement here.
This new approach to endangered species management has converted some politicians, as well. Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana, a Republican, has endorsed the concept. On the other hand, the governor of Idaho, Phil Batt, also a Republican, is adamantly opposed.
The approach is part of a nationwide trend to find alternatives to full-blown designations under the Endangered Species Act. Federal protection has become an explosive issue, largely because it removes so much management con-trol at the local and state levels.
Officials are scrambling to find alternatives both for animals whose numbers are dwindling and for those species that are being reintroduced into places where they have been absent.
When wolves were brought back to Yellowstone National Park several years ago, they were designated an experimental population, which allows biologists more flexibility to remove the animals, even to shoot them if they pose a problem.
Still, the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction was bitterly opposed, especially by livestock interests.
Similarly, there is widespread opposition to grizzly bears in the rural farming and ranching areas of Montana and Idaho.
"It's absolutely ludicrous," said state Sen. Steve Benedict, a Republican from Hamilton, Mont., a small town within several miles of the Selway Bitterroot. "Those bears were eradicated for a reason. It's like saying there's a nice big park in the middle of New York City; let's put bears there. Bears kill people. They're not cute and cuddly. They are very ferocious, and the fears people have are real."
Hank Fischer, the northern Rockies representative of Defenders of Wildlife, was active in the wolf reintroduction at Yellowstone. He said the proposal for the grizzlies came about because he and others did not want to repeat the problems that occurred there.
"It took more than 10 years and cost more than $6 million," Fischer said. "And there's a lot of people in Montana and Wyoming still very angry about it."
The big difference in the grizzly bear proposal, which earned the timber industry's support, is the citizens' advisory council.
In what backers call the citizens' proposal, about five grizzly bears would be brought in from British Columbia for five years.
Although that proposal has the most political support, two other plans are being considered. Under one, bears would be allowed to come back into the area on their own; under another, the reintroduction would be accelerated, bringing in 10 bears every year for five years.
Under the citizens' proposal, Mulligan said, there are parts of the forest, even where there are bears, that will be available for logging. If the timber industry had not been part of the process, he said, that might not be the case.
The Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness areas are nearly 4 million acres of wild land. Grizzlies were thought to inhabit the area until the 1930s, when they were hunted and trapped out.
There are two primary populations of grizzly bears left in the lower 48 states: in Yellowstone, with about 300 bears, and in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, around Glacier National Park. A population of about 200 in western Montana and eastern Idaho could link the two populations and help insure the long-term viability of grizzlies, biologists say.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release its decision in May.