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As bears rest in their dens and families gather for the holidays, there is much to celebrate in the world of wildlife conservation-and much more work ahead. For grizzly bears, the slow march toward durable recovery in the lower 48 states continues, with populations making gradual gains in 2023 and bears reclaiming historic range, including the first documented grizzly sighting in the Missouri River Breaks region of North Central Montana in more than a century. As the grizzlies' numbers and...
Fall is never a dull time in grizzly country, and this year the season seems to have brought a particularly steady stream of incidents between bears and people. From run-ins with hunters high in the backcountry to chicken coop raids in the valleys, too many encounters have ended badly for both four-legged and two-legged participants. It's never simple to pinpoint the cause of a conflict. From a poor summer of berry growth in a bear's home range to hotter and longer heat waves impacting foraging...
Grizzly bears in the Mission and Swan mountains have likely entered their dens for the winter, but an important habitat linkage for the species will remain conserved as open space next spring-and for generations to come. The Vital Ground Foundation expanded its conservation protections in the Condon area last month, purchasing 20 acres to help maintain the Upper Swan Valley's rural character and connect existing open lands. The newly-conserved acreage lies in the Simmons Meadow wetland complex,...
Grizzly bears are not stationary creatures. With a range that historically stretched from the Pacific Coast across the Great Plains, bears evolved to thrive on many landscapes. Individual grizzlies will traverse habitats from mountain ridgelines to river valleys to prairie grasslands-as long as we don't get in their way. As they continue to recover from near-extinction in the lower 48 states, grizzlies are gradually returning to their historic range. In 2021 alone, parts of central Idaho,...
Before the pandemic, 2019 saw Glacier National Park host more than three million visitors. In 2020, Montana's housing market boomed, with a recent Housing Heat Index report from Bankrate ranking the state second nationally behind Utah for market growth. Combine these pressures-tourism and new real estate development-and the region's rural character and wildlife can quickly lose out. As valleys fill and recreation hotspots clog, the pace and impact of human activity intensifies and animals are...
Grizzly bears are highly intelligent, but as far as we know they can't read maps. When a bear living in Glacier National Park sets out in search of food or a mate, it doesn't know when it crosses the park's invisible boundary. When it does, it enters a different, more dangerous reality. While Glacier is part of a sprawling wildlands complex including the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Canada's Waterton National Park, it also lies near areas that are rapidly developing. Protecting habitat buffer zon...
Each spring, there's a subset of grizzly bears that act like teenagers cut loose from home for the first time. With mother bears turning their attention to mating or younger cubs, the two- or three-year old sub-adults start getting ignored and kicked out. Parentless for the first time, these young grizzlies walk into a world of stimuli that they're still learning to interpret. It can be a dangerous time. It was two of those freewheeling subadult grizzlies that a boater recently filmed swimming...
When a federal judge returned grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone area to the threatened species list in September, he cited the bears' fragmented range in the lower 48 states as one of his justifications. It is hard to call a species recovered, he argued, when it is isolated from other wild populations, as Yellowstone's grizzlies are. Earlier this month, two conservation groups took an important step to ending that isolation. Twenty miles west of Missoula, near the confluence of western...
MISSOULA – Three grizzly bear cubs orphaned in Montana in June will have a new home. We can only hope they don't mind cold winters and the sound of French. As conservation biologists embarked on an exhaustive search to prevent the cubs from being euthanized, a message board post by Stuart Strahl, board chairman of the Missoula-based Vital Ground Foundation, led to an adoption agreement for the cubs with Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Felicien, a facility in Quebec, Canada. The zoo features large native h...
Grizzly bears are on the move. In the last year, we've seen more and more evidence of grizzly travel beyond the borders of original recovery zones. As the Great Bear reconnects its fragmented range, our conflict reduction efforts must follow in the animals' footsteps. That's why our 2017 Conservation Partners Grant Program extended Vital Ground's support to three new areas-the Mission, Madison and Big Hole valleys-while also continuing our efforts in the Swan Valley. Read on to learn about...
A property that helped turn Montana's North Fork Flathead River Valley into a conservation stronghold is changing hands but remaining wild. The Vital Ground Foundation has teamed up with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and new landowners on a conservation easement protecting 142 acres of forestland and wildlife habitat known as Polebridge Palace. On the pine-strewn benches above the North Fork Flathead, the area will remain a haven for grizzly bears, Canada lynx and other sensitive wildlife, as wel...
Connectivity-it's a hot buzzword when it comes to wildlife. But what does it really mean? At The Vital Ground Foundation, connectivity shapes our organizational vision. A dozen years ago, when the foundation moved from Utah to Montana and became a working land trust focused on grizzly bear recovery, it was connectivity that drew us quickly to the Swan Valley. "We don't need to save thousands and thousands of acres," explains biologist and Vital Ground trustee Douglas Chadwick. "We just need to...
Merlot or Syrah? French roast or Colombian? A grizzly bear might not know the difference, but that doesn't mean wine and coffee can't make a big difference for the iconic species. Look no further than two western Montana businesses, Missoula's Ten Spoon Vineyard & Winery and Whitefish's Montana Coffee Traders. Each contributes daily to the long-term survival of the grizzly bear through business partnerships with The Vital Ground Foundation, a Missoula-based land trust dedicated to conserving...
