The illegal killing of a female grizzly from what bear advocates say is a tiny, imperiled subpopulation has stumped investigators for months, and now a $15,000 reward is being offered in hopes of cracking the case.
The grizzly was shot to death on or about Oct. 28 north of Perkins Lake in Boundary County, Idaho, according to Idaho Fish and Game.
That’s Idaho’s northernmost county, bordering Canada at the tip of the state’s panhandle.
The bear was from the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly subpopulation. An isolated pocket of perhaps 60 bears in the rugged Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem in far north Idaho and northwest Montana.
Big Rewards Offered
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) put up a $7,000 reward for information that cracks the case. Idaho Citizens Against Poaching tossed in an additional $700.
An environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, this month added another $7,300, bringing the total to $15,000.
It’s not the only high-profile predator killing case with a hefty reward. As of Friday, donations reached $36,700 for a reward for tips about the poaching of Wolf 1478F. She was a member of Yellowstone National Park’s famous Junction Butte pack.
Wolf 1478F is thought to have been killed on or around Christmas Day in Montana’s Wolf Hunt Area 313, north of Yellowstone.
Although that’s a legal hunting zone, the 3-wolf season quota for that area had already been met when she was shot. That made the killing of 1478F an illegal poaching, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Details Scarce On Grizzly Shooting
Because the grizzly killing is still under investigations, details remain scarce.
The case is being jointly investigated by Fish and Game and FWS. The federal agency has jurisdiction over alleged illegal grizzly killings, because grizzlies in the Lower 48 remain under federal endangered species protection.
The bear had a radio tracking collar, which began emitting a “mortality signal” on Oct. 28, according to FWS.
“Service staff and IDFG (Fish and Game) officers investigated and determined the grizzly was shot in a manner indicating it was not a threat to the shooter,” according to the agencies.
Other details, such as whether the female grizzly was thought to have cubs with her when she was shot, were unavailable.
Cabinet-Yaak Bears Can’t Stand The Loss
The killing of an adult female Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies is especially egregious, because the tiny subpopulation can’t stand the loss, said Andrea Zaccardi, Center for Biological Diversity carnivore conservation program legal director.
“Even the loss of just one female grizzly bear in that population has the potential to have significant impacts on that population, because it’s so small,” she told Cowboy State Daily.
The Cabinet-Yaak bears are essentially cut off from Montana’s Northern Continental Divide grizzlies, thought to number about 1,000 bears, Zaccardi said.
To the north, in Canada, “clear-cutting” timber operations discourage more grizzlies coming from that direction, she said.
To protect the bears, the Center for Biological Diversity has sued to stop Forest Service timber sales on the Idaho side, she said.
The “recovery plan” target number for the Cabinet-Yaak is 100 grizzlies, but there are, at most, 60 bears there, according to the center’s lawsuit.
Adult Females Are Vital
Prominent grizzly researcher Frank van Manen said the Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies have been boosted over the years by bears transplanted from elsewhere.
“It’s a much smaller population. It has been dependent upon augmenting it with bears from the Northern Continental Divide population,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
The loss of female grizzles can set a population back, he said.
“Females are the reproductive engines of any wildlife population, and especially in grizzly bears. Those mature females are critical to any population,” he said.
Grizzlies in Wyoming and the rest of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) are doing well in that regard, he added.
For a grizzly population to do well, there should be at least a 91% survival rate of females of breeding age or at least “independent age”, or roughly two years old, he said.
In the GYE, the survival rate of adult females is “95% in any typical year,” van Manen said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
