Grizzlies around Yellowstone Park face a major problem – and it’s right in front of me. This is Interstate 90. It’s a busy highway. And it might as well be a brick wall for bears.
Grizzlies have to find their way across this road, or, some scientists say Yellowstone bears – a genetic island – could face some major health concerns in the long run.
That’s because in the lower 48 there are only two sizable grizzly populations left: Here, and up near Glacier national park. I-90 separates the two.
State data shows that one collared grizzly bear bounced off this highway nearly 50 times trying to cross it. I get it! I don’t wanna cross this thing either, it’s scary.
It could take decades for grizzlies to link up on their own. So in 2024, the state decided to take things into their own hands. Cecily Costello is a wildlife biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
"This was a way to kind of inject some additional genetic diversity into the population to kind-of counterbalance that natural process of losing it," she says.
Montana biologists captured a young male and a female grizzly near Glacier and hauled them hundreds of miles south. Costello helped oversee the effort.
"You know, you kind of feel bad. You take this bear from where it grew up and you know, truck it 350 miles and just dump it out and expect it to do well," she says.
The bears could have died, or eaten some cows, or even tried to make the long walk home.
"You just don't know what's going to happen," Costello says.
The hope was that each Glacier grizzly would breed with Yellowstone bears. And this spring, a Wyoming Fish and Game plane followed a signal coming from the young sow’s tracking collar and took a photo.
"It's an excellent picture. It's taken from a fixed wing aircraft," Costello says.
In the image, two grizzly cubs embrace on a dry spot in the snow outside their den while their hulking mother looks up.
For wildlife managers like Costello, it was proof their ursine crapshoot had paid off: the two grizzly populations had connected. For others, though, the success comes with complicated emotions.
Casey Anderson is a wildlife filmmaker and longtime bear advocate who lives near Yellowstone.
"In my lifetime, grizzlies went from a phantom to, you know, gradually more and more and more and until like now – it's like if I wanted to, I could go see a grizzly bear every day," he says.
We met at a trailhead about an hour north of the park. We’re only about 10 miles from that busy highway. As soon as I pull up, I realize I’ve made a rookie mistake.
I forgot my bear spray like a fool.
Think: High-powered pepper spray to deploy if you run into a bear and things go bad. Luckily, Anderson has an extra can in his truck.
Goateed and sporting a hunting pack, Anderson almost immediately identifies a grizzly track as we start up the trail.
"I call it a peck of his claws."
Anderson would prefer that the two bear populations connect without human intervention. He says the state didn’t move the grizzlies out of the goodness of its heart, and his bigger concern is what the breakthrough could mean politically.
"It's time to have full authority for grizzly bears in Montana returned back to Montana," Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said at a press conference when those bears were released.
For about two decades, states around Yellowstone have maintained the bears have recovered enough to strip their Endangered Species Act protections. Courts have repeatedly blocked efforts to delist the grizzlies, in part because the population was genetically isolated.
Now, that argument might be harder to make.
Anderson says state management would also legalize a grizzly hunt. So when he heard about the photograph of the sow with cubs –
"I feel like there's a bit of a celebration, like yay. But then it just, every time I see anything where humans get their grubby little hands on stuff and try to make things better, it always feels a little yucky. A yucky celebration."
Anderson has watched as delisting debates raged. Federal authorities have taken grizzlies off the endangered species list twice since 2007, only to be overturned when environmental groups sued.
"We're protected, we’re not! We’re protected, we’re not! And it's like, you know, there's going be a grizzly bear hunt. And now it's, like, now we're shutting down everything. You can't even fart in the woods anymore," he says.
As we finish up our hike – safely, with no bear encounters – he says grizzly country is something unique and fragile, that we should preserve.
"As the pendulum swings, we've seen this over and over, the grizzly bear is just out here trying to dodge it."
The odds those cubs survive their first year are less than 50 percent. Wildlife biologists will be watching closely. The Trump Administration is expected to finalize a rule that could delist grizzlies by the end of the year.
