Griz Reintroduction

Griz Reintroduction

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Gregg Bafundo lives in Tonasket, WA and believes strongly that we should make every effort to increase the grizzly population. "If they reach that level in my lifetime I think we will still be lucky to see one. If they do reach our recovery goal, I think we should manage them as a game species like other states do and we should have hunting seasons on them. I am an avid bow hunter and to go up against a grizzly with my long bow would be an opportunity of a lifetime and I think that it would be something that would be really cool for people’s grandkids to be able to see. I think there is a lot of unwarranted fear and I think we can coexist. They think that places like the mountains of Montana and places in Wyoming where they hunt grizzly bears, the success ratio is proven that people who make their living on the land and these bears and people who recreate in the mountains and these bears can coexist in a way that is quite sensationalized as you see on the sometimes. So I'm in favor of it. I'd like to go up into the wilderness and go on the hunt or a backpack trip or something like that and be able to look across Horseshoe Basin and see one of these bears roaming around. We need natural reintroduction and anybody who studies the math can look north of the border and see that the habitat north of the border is really fragmented. There's just no way for these bears to naturally migrate down into North Central Washington and the North Cascades.
Previous ReportWrong species
Next ReportNWTF funding