USA: Judge halts grizzly bear hunt
Outside of Alaska, grizzly bears in the USA continue to be protected from hunting. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen of Montana ruled on Thursday to temporarily ban the first hunt in more than 40 years in Idaho and Wyoming.
Outside of Alaska, grizzly bears in the USA continue to be protected from hunting. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen of Montana ruled on Thursday to temporarily ban the first recreational hunt in more than 40 years in Idaho and Wyoming.
For conservation activists and Indigenous peoples, the preliminary injunction is a major victory. They had filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which in 2017 had lifted protections for the 700 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.
Conservationists and Indigenous peoples secure victory
The plaintiffs argued in court that grizzlies were still fighting for survival. From the agency's perspective, however, the population had recovered and was growing. “Because once an individual of an endangered species has been harmed, protecting that species becomes all the more difficult,” Christensen explained.
The animal welfare advocates further argued that grizzly death rates had been high in recent years. Their natural food sources were declining due to climate change.
The recreational hunt had been scheduled to begin that weekend. The licence would have allowed the shooting of 23 bears for recreational purposes in the two states. It would have been the first grizzly hunt in 40 years in the Yellowstone region.
Early 20th century: grizzlies nearly wiped out
Tens of thousands of grizzlies once lived in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. Recreational hunters killed most of them during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Yellowstone region, the number of animals had dropped to 136 when they were listed as an endangered species in 1975. This does not apply to Alaska, where approximately 30’000 grizzlies live. More on wildlife and biodiversity.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
