Study: Grizzlies’ range has expanded | Great Falls Tribune

By KARL PUCKETT • Tribune Staff Writer • September 17, 2008

WEST GLACIER — The occupied range of the threatened grizzly bear in northwest Montana has expanded far outside the original recovery boundaries set 15 years ago, a new population study has found.

The five-year study, based on DNA collected from bear hairs left behind in the woods, has concluded an estimated 765 grizzlies live in northwestern Montana.

That’s 2 1/2 times the number of bears previously estimated to live in the 7.8 million-acre Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which is about the size of Maryland and Delaware combined, according to study leader Kate Kendall of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Previously, the population of bears was deduced by sightings of females with cubs.

“We never knew how many we had,” Kendall said.

The study, the first ecosystemwide assessment of northwest Montana’s bears since they were listed as a threatened species in 1975, provides previously unavailable baseline data to assist in gauging the success of recovery efforts, Kendall said.

She said the study’s accuracy was better than any previous study she’d seen on grizzlies or brown bears and described it as the largest “noninvasive” study of bears to date. A paper on the results will be published in January in The Journal of Wildlife Management.

“It is some really cool information,” Kendall said.

Besides the population number, the study also examined gender, genetic health and occupied habitat

Study: Grizzlies’ range has expanded | greatfallstribune.com | Great Falls Tribune.