News & Advice

There Could be a Grizzly Bear Trophy Hunt Around Yellowstone National Park This Fall

Wyoming just approved limited hunting around the park. But how will it affect wildlife tourism?
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On Wednesday, a Wyoming wildlife commission voted unanimously to allow grizzly bear hunting to take place for the first time in the state in more than four decades. Under this new proposal, during the coming fall season, up to 22 grizzly bears would be permitted to be shot in areas around Yellowstone, including within one swath of parkland designated as a scientific monitoring area for bear populations. Not that Old Faithful is about to become a backdrop for a trophy photo: Hunting won’t be permitted in Yellowstone National Park itself, nor in neighboring Grand Teton National Park or along the road that connects them.

What could have led state officials to put this furry American icon, which more than 200 tribal nations consider sacred, in its crosshairs? Since coming under federal protection in 1975, the grizzly population has grown from 136 to about 700 in 2017, causing U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zincke to “delist” the Yellowstone grizzlies last summer and turn over their management to Wyoming (as well as to neighboring Montana and Idaho, both part of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem). The National Rifle Association of America and other special interest groups then petitioned to be able to hunt them. “The science that this decision is based upon shows that this isn’t going to have an impact on the grizzly bear population holistically,” says Wyoming Game & Fish communications director Renny MacKay.

But some critics say the new ruling represents a huge setback for grizzly bear recovery in and around Yellowstone. “We’re particularly concerned about the fact that females could be killed, because they reproduce so slowly,” says Bonnie Rice, Sierra Club’s senior representative for the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Rockies region. “Grizzlies are the second-slowest reproducing mammal in North America—it takes a female about ten years to replace herself in the population. It’s taken more than four decades to increase the population by maybe 500 bears. So it’s extremely rash and irresponsible to move ahead with something like this just months after they were removed from the endangered species list.”

Yellowstone and Teton National Park collectively draw about 6.5 million visitors a year, according to the National Park Service, and bear sightings are common. But the area in which hunting will be permitted, around the boundaries where the two parks meet, doesn’t get much in the way of human traffic; meanwhile, hunting for other species—elk, moose, and deer—has been allowed for decades. “You’re talking literally the most remote place in the lower 48 states,” MacKay says. (The Washington Post published a helpful map breakdown of the hunting zones.) Still, bears’ home ranges can move from inside to outside the park. “Bears don’t understand these political boundaries,” Rice says.

Closer to civilization, the new proposal puts a no-hunting buffer around an area east of Grand Teton known for its roadside bear sightings, including a beloved and un-shy female grizzly known as No. 399, who often makes appearances there with her cubs to the delight of passing motorists (she even has her own Twitter account; needless to say she doesn’t sound thrilled about this week’s ruling). Traditionally, cars have posed the greatest threat to the area’s grizzly population: In 2016, 399’s cub was killed by a hit-and-run driver; last year, 56 grizzlies died in the Greater Yellowstone area, most of them hit by cars.

Trophy hunting is slated to go ahead as planned once the fall season starts. But in the meantime, six environmental organizations including the Sierra Club have filed lawsuits challenging the Yellowstone grizzlies’ delisted status, meaning that a victory would effectively stop the hunt before it starts. A judgment is expected in August.

Until then, Wyoming may have a situation on its hands as tourists decide where to spend their vacation dollars this summer, given a mounting public outcry over the recent ruling. “Bears and wolves are the number one thing people want to see in the area,” Rice says. “In 2016 Wyoming brought in $360 million in wildlife watching [revenue], which is much more than it was generating from hunting and fishing. So Wyoming is really risking its image and tourist economy by moving ahead with the trophy hunting of grizzly bears.”