The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West by Robert Chaney

Author:Robert Chaney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Is it a reason to remove the bikes? And what about everything else humans like to do in bear country? Whose interests rule?

Three years to the day after Treat’s death, Flathead National Forest supervisor Chip Weber declared his disagreement with Servheen’s report. New controversy had arisen over a commercial ultramarathon and a backcountry bike shuttle service in the national forest land around Whitefish, Montana, about twenty miles from Coram.

“I want to start by strongly repudiating the notion that as an agency, we ought not promote, foster or permit activities because engagement in those activities presents risk to the participants,” Weber told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s summer 2019 gathering in Missoula. “The issues around this are much broader than trail use, and grizzly bears and both people and wildlife may suffer if the discussion isn’t expanded.”

As to Board of Review report, Weber told me he had great personal respect for Servheen but “his (Servheen’s) focus is grizzly bear recovery and solely grizzly bear recovery. Mine is serving the American public and the needs they want in the context of many wildlife species and an overall conservation mission that’s very, very broad.”

Individual sporting events like the Whitefish ultramarathon have such minimal impact on grizzly bears, Weber said, they fall under a categorical exclusion from in-depth environmental review. At the same time, those events endear increasing numbers of people to their public lands as the number of users grows year after year.

“There’s a broad public out there with needs to be served and not just the needs of the few,” Weber said. “We think that greater good for the greatest number will be served. That fosters connectivity with wildlands and a united group of people that can support conservation. And the best conservation for bears is served by figuring out how to have these human activities in ways that are as safe as they can be, understanding you can never make anything perfectly safe.”

The US Forest Service’s founding chief, Gifford Pinchot, stamped that utilitarian philosophy into his corps at the beginning of the twentieth century. At one time, national forest signs all bore the legend “Land of Many Uses.” The new agency motto is “Caring for the Land, Serving People.” More and more, those people want to risk rafting the rapids of Wild and Scenic Rivers, paragliding off ridgetops, high-marking snowmobiles in avalanche basins, and picking huckleberries in bear country.

But what about caring for the land? Does some theory of limits exist that can set thresholds for how much people-serving is too much? By tradition or taboo, there remain places in cathedrals and palaces where people don’t go, or at least don’t get free rein to pursue their ambitions. It’s possible to free-climb the Eiffel Tower, but Parisian police will await the victory rappel. I once sneaked a photo of the Crown Jewels of England, but I got escorted out of the Tower of London when I tried to snap a second.

An old farmer’s quip goes “Whiskey’s for drinkin’, water’s for fightin’.”

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