Grizzly bears to be reintroduced to Washington state’s North Cascades

The National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday their decision to “aggressively restore” grizzly bears to the North Cascades region of Washington state.

For thousands of years, grizzly bears have roamed the area “as an important part of the ecosystem,” distributing seeds of native plants and keeping other wildlife populations in balance, according to the NPS.

The last grizzly bear sighting in the area was in 1996, and the population has continued to decline, primarily due to human killing of grizzly bears.

“We will once again see grizzly bears in the landscape, restoring an important thread in the fabric of the North Cascades,” Don Stryker, director of North Cascades National Park Facilities, said in a statement. said.

Grizzly recovery will be done by “relocating grizzly bears from other ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains or interior British Columbia.”

The goal is to relocate three to seven grizzly bears each year for about five to 10 years, for an initial total of 25 bears. There is no set timeline for when this process will begin.

The decision also designated the area’s grizzly bears as a nonessential experimental population under part of the Endangered Species Act. The agency hopes the designation will give authorities and land managers more tools to deal with grizzly bears than they would have had without the designation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release a final 10(j) rule in the coming days, but Brad Thompson, the agency’s state supervisor, said the rule “will “It’s based on extensive community engagement and conversation about reintroducing wildlife.” The North Cascades will be actively managed to address concerns for human safety, property and livestock, and grizzly bear recovery. ”

“We provide an expanded set of management tools recognizing that grizzly bear recovery in the North Cascades is dependent on community tolerance of grizzly bears,” Thompson added.