A new study suggests that a 24-year-long campaign to boost
grizzly bear numbers in Yellowstone National Park has made
little, if any, headway. The study throws cold water on the
federal government's claims that the Yellowstone grizzly
population has been recovering steadily and the animals could be
removed from the threatened species list. The study, appearing
in this month's issue of Ecology, also portends even harder
times for the grizzlies, thanks to recent poor yields of
whitebark pine seeds, one of the bear's key foods. When the
grizzly was placed on the list in 1975, an estimated 200 to 300
bears were left in Yellowstone. Park managers took steps to stop
practices like bears feeding at open garbage pits to reduce
maulings and allow the bears to lead a more natural life in the
wild. To find out whether the population has indeed grown,
ecological modeler Craig Pease of Vermont Law School and David
Mattson, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) grizzly field
biologist, looked at 20 years of data on grizzlies tra