Bear Study Team to Get New Director on Feb. 17

by Evelyn Boswell

02/05/98 BOZEMAN -- The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team will soon have a new director, only its second in 25 years, says Mark Haroldson, interim director for the study team which is based at Montana State University-Bozeman.

Chuck Schwartz, research coordinator with the Division of Wildlife Conservation for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) will become the new director on Feb. 17. He replaces Richard Knight, the original director who retired in August. Haroldson, a biologist who served as interim director, plans to remain on the team after Schwartz’s arrival.

Schwartz currently supervises seven wildlife research biologists as well as a statistician who specializes in biology and a veterinarian. He has worked as a research biologist for the ADF&G studying mainly moose and bear. He leads the Interagency Brown Bear Study Team in Alaska and is director of the world-renowned Moose Research Center. His areas of expertise are black and brown bear ecology and management, ungulate physiology and nutrition, predator-prey dynamics and population management.

"My vision is to be a leader and team player who will continue to focus the research programs toward improving our understanding of and ability to manage the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem," Schwartz said. "I envision the current research to continue with additional emphasis toward a systems approach.

"I would like to take advantage of the newest technologies including GPS telemetry, GIS, and DNA fingerprinting," Schwartz continued. "I care about and have worked toward the conservation and wise use of our wildlife resources all my career."

Countering a rumor that he is a retiree, Schwartz said, "To set the record straight, I am retiring from ADF&G after 20 years of service. I am not ‘retiring’ in the sense that I plan to sit back in a chair and rock my life away. I’m only changing jobs. I love what I do and intend to continue with a very active program. I have a passion for wildlife research and can’t imagine doing anything else."

Schwartz said he and his wife decided to move to Montana because they love the west, and this state has a special appeal for them.

"Bozeman is a beautiful community and being associated with a good university like MSU gives added benefits," Schwartz said.

Haroldson, a biologist who has studied bears for 23 years, 14 of those in the Yellowstone ecosystem, said the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team was borne out of controversy, but it strives to be independent and apolitical. Its research is used by organizations and individuals who hold a wide range of opinions about grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

"We want to stay out of politics as much as we can," Haroldson said. "Our role is to provide good science. That’s what our role was when we were established, and that’s how we still see ourselves."

The study team was organized in 1973 and resulted from a recommendation by a National Academy of Science review committee, Haroldson said. The committee suggested setting up a "non-governmental, independent, science-gathering entity" after a national controversy erupted in the late 1960s over bears and open garbage dumps in Yellowstone Park. One side wanted to close the dumps and cut off the bears’ food supply "cold turkey." The other side felt that such a measure was too extreme and would set the bears on a path of unrecoverable decline. The dumps were finally closed in 1970 and 1971.

"I think both camps were party right and partly wrong," Haroldson commented. "We did lose a heck of a lot of bears, but they (the bear population in general) did survive."

The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem was thought to have had less than 200 grizzly bears when the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team was formed, Haroldson said. As for current numbers, Haroldson quotes a 1995 paper by Knight and Lee Eberhardt of Washington as saying they were 90 percent confident that the 25,000 square mile ecosystem contains 280 to 610 grizzly bears.

The number of females seen with "cubs of the year" has risen steadily since the mid-1980s, Haroldson added. The all-time high was seen in 1996 when researchers observed 33 females grizzlies with cubs born that spring. The number in 1997 was 31. Along with that, more females are producing cubs, and the total number of observed cubs has risen.

Are the numbers high enough to warrant removing grizzly bears from the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act? They could be, but it will be 1999 before anyone can start petitioning for their delisting, Haroldson said. A two-year moratorium because of high mortality rates prohibits anyone from starting the petition process before then.

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