Tribes join effort to protect Yellowstone grizzly bears

BILLINGS – Leaders of American Indian tribes in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains have joined an effort to retain federal protections for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to decide this year whether it will move to lift protections for the roughly 1,000 grizzlies that scientists say live in the Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The campaign to enlist tribal backing for continued protections is being coordinated in large part by wildlife advocates. Organizers say more than two dozen tribes have signed on with resolutions and other declarations of support.

Tribal leaders cited their ancestral connection to the Yellowstone area and the cultural importance of grizzly bears to their people.

“Any move to delist the sacred grizzly bear on this ancestral landscape must involve consultation with the affected Tribal Nations,” Ivan Posey, a member of the Eastern Shoshone and chairman of the Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, wrote in a letter last month.

The council includes representatives from 11 tribes.

Tribal leaders from Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota and Oklahoma have submitted similar letters through an advocacy group known as Guardians of Our Ancestors’ Legacy, or GOAL.

Lifting protections would transfer jurisdiction over grizzlies to states.