Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.

Two grizzly siblings are observed through a spotting scope shortly before capture by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks bear managers. The female grizzly on the left had a missing foot lost due to injury and infection. A cyclist found the foot on the Snowbowl Road north of Missoula on April 11, and both bears were captured  on May 29. The injured grizzly had to be euthanized, while the second female received a radio collar and relocation to an undisclosed location. 

As Montana's grizzly bear population reclaims historical habitat beyond designated recovery zones, the bears are moving into communities that haven't seen grizzlies for generations.

That's spurring wildlife managers to prepare ranchers and residents before grizzlies appear at their doorsteps.  

"Right now we’ve got subadults dispersing to who knows where," said Jamie Jonkel, bear management specialist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks. "These bears are dispersing outward."

Jonkel estimated 40 grizzlies are living on the Blackfoot and Clearwater valley floors: "We’re going to see more and more creep as time goes by because we do have an awful lot of female activity in the Blackfoot Valley and elsewhere."

That "very slow creep" into other areas leads wildlife managers like Jonkel to begin educating people on how to avoid conflict before the bears arrive. Across FWP's Region 2, Jonkel said he's "beating the drum and beating it loud so that the communities outside of where we have grizzly activities are at least hearing what’s going on." 

Jonkel described the outreach as a "slow process that’s just barely in front of the bear line," and said that people do pay attention when they hear about grizzlies near them. Lee Enterprises' "Grizzlies and Us" project last winter "really, really helped to get western Montana’s attention," Jonkel said. 

Jonkel's remarks came at Monday's City Club forum in Missoula — the club's first in-person gathering since the onset of the COVID pandemic in early 2020. Monday's session focused on grizzly population and conflict with humans and livestock, and featured U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator Hilary Cooley, and Wayne Slaght, longtime manager of Two Creek Monture Ranch in Ovando. Libby Metcalf, a professor of wildland management at University of Montana's W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, moderated.

In 1975, when grizzlies were originally listed under the then 2-year-old Endangered Species Act as threatened in the continental U.S., the species occupied just 2% of its historical range in the Lower 48 states. The two largest designated recovery zones for the species, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, are now home to an estimated 1,114 and 1,069 grizzlies, respectively. Missoula sits within the NCDE, Cooley noted, and "bears are doing very well in this ecosystem, spreading well beyond the recovery zone. 

"We’ve met biological recovery, we’ve got more bears every year," Cooley said. "And bears come with challenges. That’s why we’re talking here today."

Some places on the cusp of playing host to grizzlies already face conflict as grizzlies move into the area. Avon is one of those places. The small ranching community on U.S. Route 12 on the west side of MacDonald Pass sits along the Little Blackfoot River between Garrison and Helena, and south of the Blackfoot Valley where grizzlies now roam around Ovando and Seeley Lake. After being eradicated from the Avon area by humans a century ago, grizzlies hadn't had much of a presence there until the past couple years.

The McIntosh family, sixth-generation Avon ranchers, told the Montana Standard last winter that grizzlies had killed at least five yearling calves on their ranch in spring 2021, and sightings of the bears on the ranch had become more frequent. One was captured and relocated from the ranch, and another was euthanized. Wildlife managers advised the family to remove and dispose of livestock carcasses they'd historically dumped into a pit on the ranch, which had attracted the grizzlies, and Bill McIntosh, who said he'd hardly ever seen grizzlies around Avon until recently, bought bear spray for the first time. 

But ranches will likely have to adapt even further as grizzlies settle across wider swaths of western Montana. Slaght, the ranch manager in Ovando, explained at Monday's forum that mitigating conflict with grizzlies is "something we live with 24 hours a day, seven days a week ... for us to live with them every day and have to deal with them on private property, that’s a headache and it’s a costly headache." 

The Two Creek Monture Ranch now has about 10 grizzlies on the ranch for most the year. They often come within feet of his home, Slaght said, which has led to "huge costs" in adapting ranch infrastructure and operations for grizzlies, "not only for safety of our livestock but for safety of the human beings out there."

Grizzlies repeatedly broke into wooden grain sheds on the ranch, so Slaght replaced them with steel shipping containers that cost $3,500 apiece. Electrified mats help guard gates, cameras monitor grizzly activity, and electric fencing costs upward of $18,000 per mile. The ranch has installed 6 or 7 miles so far. Like on the McIntosh ranch, Slaght has done "a lot of preventative stuff, a lot of cleanup." 

Slaght said his views on coexistence with grizzlies sometimes clash with those of the mainstream ag community. 

"Ag thinks that the bears should have to deal with us," he said, arguing instead that humans should figure out how to work around grizzlies. "If we want to live on the land, that’s a hassle we’re going to have to have." 

That hassle is also present in more residential places already home to grizzly populations, Jonkel said. He's working to help people understand how not to entice bears onto their properties and near their homes. He joked that "everyone’s an amazing animal trainer and just doesn’t know it," and said he often humorously instructs people on how to train bears to come onto their front porch, reciting a tongue-in-cheek list of human activities and habits that attract bears.

Educational outreach, he acknowledged, is "a tough one, and humor doesn’t necessarily work with every area ... But humor has always worked for me." 

Another trick, he said, is helping people understand that "we’ve taken over all of the habitats … but the very best of the best habitat is the spring and fall habitat that are the valley floors,” and “the best of the best is where we live.” Irrigated lawns, bird feeders and especially easily accessible garbage have all made residential areas prime feeding ground for grizzlies, and prime for human-grizzly conflict: "I think getting people to understand that, and why, will help." 

Over the horizon for Jonkel and other wildlife managers are areas like Drummond, Anaconda and the Deer Lodge Valley, where grizzlies may pop up soon. The Bitterroot National Forest and Salmon-Challis National Forest farther south have seen some activity, he said, but not much. Mineral County, west of Missoula, is where he's going next to educate communities. 

"We got ahead of the barrage" with the Blackfoot Challenge helping ranchers reduce attractants and monitor and deter bears, he said after the forum, reiterating the importance of preemptive education. "That helped a lot." 

Another possible solution, Slaght said, is one he knows may rile conservationists: reducing grizzly population, or dispersing the bears to reduce population density. Although he works to coexist with them, he said, "we have too many bears. That’s, in my opinion, one of the biggest things."

Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.

ROCK CREEK – Jackson Birrell waded through thigh-deep water on a bucolic late-spring day last week, but unlike other anglers venturing into th…

Homer Wilkes, the USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, visited Lolo National Forest's Pattee Canyon Recreation Area on Friday afternoon to discuss the Great American Outdoors Act.

The death is the first visitor fatality in the park this year.

Two grizzly siblings are observed through a spotting scope shortly before capture by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks bear managers. The female grizzly on the left had a missing foot lost due to injury and infection. A cyclist found the foot on the Snowbowl Road north of Missoula on April 11, and both bears were captured  on May 29. The injured grizzly had to be euthanized, while the second female received a radio collar and relocation to an undisclosed location. 

Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.