Interestingly—perhaps paradoxically—the issue that has consistently sparked the most fervent opposition to delisting among environmentalists and animal welfare advocates has been the prospect of a trophy hunt on grizzly bears under state authority. I say “paradoxically,” because the States and Service might have succeeded in delisting several grizzly bear populations but for the near-strident insistence by state managers on instituting a hunt shortly after removal of federal protections, as was the case with Wyoming and Idaho during the last delisting attempt in 2018. In some ways, state wildlife managers have been their own worst enemy.

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Montana’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council

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This historical backdrop brings me to the Montana’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council, or GBAC. There is little doubt that state officials in Montana were looking for some creative way during the last two years to not only resurrect the delisting agenda, but also legitimize hunting grizzly bears. It probably didn’t take much to light on a page from the playbook followed by state officials as part of the lead-up to a previous delisting attempt during 2006-2007. During this antecedent effort, the Governor of Montana had convened citizen working groups comprised of people representing different public interests.

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These groups were unambiguously stacked to represent the interests of those who were advocates not only of delisting, but also of hunting and establishing hard boundaries for the distribution of grizzly bears within Montana. Not surprisingly, this process produced recommendations that were then used by Montana and the Service to promote delisting and the curtailment of grizzly bear distributions to comport with “social carrying capacity”—i.e., places where politically influential people in the ranching, logging, and mining industries didn’t want bears (for more on this, see this essay).

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Given this prior history, its not surprising that the Governor of Montana announced during 2019 that he would convene an advisory council comprised of citizens representing different interests held by the people of Montana to develop recommendations for management of grizzly bears in Montana. Applications were welcomed from all and sundry. Of the 150 applicants, 18 were selected and appointed. Facilitators from the University of Montana were employed. Managers and biologists from Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks were designated as the official provisioners of information regarding all matters biological, ecological, and social. The stage was set. On the face of it, the GBAC looked auspicious.

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But, as always, the devil is in the details.

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Failings of the Grizzly Bear Advisory Council

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Perhaps the best way to understand the nature of this devil is in reference to some standards that have been developed for collaborative processes that build common ground as a basis for developing widely-accepted solutions to shared problems—all in service of a healthy democratic society. these standards minimally include: (1) meaningful representation of the spectrum of public interests; (2) transparent criteria for selection of participants; (3) independence of the process, itself, from the partisan interests of conveners; (3) independence of facilitators from the special interests of either conveners or a subset of participants; (4) provisioning and co-creation of information in ways maximizing odds that participants develop a shared view of how the relevant world works; and (5) transparent, mutually agreed-upon, and rigorously implemented standards for deliberations.

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If you are interested in reading more about standards for judging collaborative processes see the book by Tom Koontz and others entitled "Collaborative Environmental Management," Tim Gieseke's book "Collaborative Environmental Governance Frameworks", Roger Pielke's book "The Honest Broker", and the many books by Larry Susskind, best introduced by "Breaking the Impasse".

 

Without going into exhaustive detail, the GBAC failed on all of these counts. The selection process was opaque. The resulting composition was clearly weighted towards the interests of extraction industries, ranchers, and hunters—out of proportion to their representation in the broader population of Montana. Some interests, notably rooted in the new economies of technology and ecotourism, were not represented at all, even accounting for the single representative of traditional ranch-based outfitting. FWP conveners dictated the agenda, either directly or through the charter created by the Governor’s Office. Facilitation was also seemingly done to advance partisan interests. And implementation of decision-making was disturbingly vagarious.

Sources of information from outside FWP were, moreover, deliberately and systematically excluded from authoritative deliberations, often in ways that inflamed rather than ameliorated divides. Instead, a cumbersome system organized around “public comments” was constructed, without any clear indications of how, whether, and to what extent these comments were introduced into deliberations. In the end, the role of science, information, and proof were polarized and politicized as much due to failings of facilitation as to design of the process.

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But, importantly, all of these failings were rooted in what was clearly the promotion of a partisan agenda manifest in patterns of authoritative bias in all aspects and at all stages of the process.

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From what I witnessed, the GBAC was in no small measure constituted and run to promote the removal of Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections, followed by institution of a grizzly bear hunt, and this despite what was stated in the GBAC Charter. This imbedded bias resulted in a focus during much of the proceedings on two of the most contentious and divisive issues in grizzly bear management—which, in itself, defeated the ostensible purposes of a collaborative problem-solving process. FWP officials repeatedly advocated the virtues of—even need for—grizzly bear hunting during Council proceedings. They worked assiduously behind the scenes with pro-hunting advocates on the Council to develop pro-hunting arguments. FWP officials further served partisan purposes by selectively providing the Council with information about the ecology and management of bears in ways overtly designed to make the presumed virtues of hunting inescapable. And all of this was largely uncontested by facilitation.

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Fleshing Out the Arguments

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And yet the agenda of FWP’s leaders was largely thwarted. There is no recommendation from the Council in favor of delisting, nor is there likely to be consensus on the desirability of a hunt—despite the best efforts of State officials. The dysfunctional process also served at least one useful purpose by encouraging participants to flesh out arguments for and against hunting in a forum that allowed for a more-or-less systematic debate—albeit one that was encumbered by attempted limitations on access to relevant information.

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The argument in favor of hunting came out bit by bit, but eventually took on a coherent form. Hunting grizzly bears would reduce human-bear conflicts by killing troublesome bears, increase human safety by instilling fear, drive bears away from settled areas, and build acceptance of bears among people who were currently intolerant (i.e., increase “social acceptance”).

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I appreciated having this argument articulated so transparently simply because it gave me (and others) the opportunity to evaluate its merits by the standards of evidence and logic. My efforts resulted in a technical report entitled “Efficacies and Effects of Sport Hunting Grizzly Bears.” To my knowledge, this report contains the most comprehensive review, synthesis, and application of research pertaining to the prima facie claims used to promote hunting grizzlies.

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Evaluating the Arguments

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Without going into exhaustive detail, none of the claims used to promote hunting are substantiated. There is little or no evidence supporting the contention that hunting will reduce conflicts—at least hunting short of levels leading to local near-extirpation of bears. By contrast, there is overwhelming evidence for the efficacy of non-lethal measures in promoting human-bear coexistence, as practiced, in fact, by many FWP employees with boots on the ground. Likewise, there is no evidence to support the contention that hunting will increase the safety of people around bears. At the same time there is reason to believe that the reactivity of bears will increase, along with hazards to people encountering them. Perhaps surprisingly, there is also little or no evidence for the claim that hunting will increase acceptance of bears among people who currently would just as soon not have them around. Rather, hunting would probably merely serve to satisfy a preexisting demand among a small number of hunters for opportunities to legally kill a grizzly, as well as preexisting desires harbored by some people for there to be fewer bears in fewer places. None of this amounts to increased “acceptance.” If anything, the available evidence suggests that intolerance might actually increase, along with poaching tacitly sanctioned by legal killing under the rubric of “hunting,” proximally catalyzed by personal vendettas against bears and the people who care about them.

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Interestingly, as the GBAC process progressed, the untenable basis for pro-hunting arguments led to a gradual erosion of the legitimacy of resulting claims. These arguments haven’t gone away, but they are not voiced with as much frequency, stridency, or even confidence.

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Core Beliefs and Narratives

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This whittling away of credible “science-based” arguments in favor of hunting led to an interesting and illuminating result. As part of a compromise reached by those on the GBAC for and against hunting, pro- and con-arguments were listed in lieu of a consensus statement or recommendation (see Section 2 of the GBAC’s Draft Recommendations). Notably, this was the only issue of many treated this way.

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The pro-hunting argument shed light on core beliefs and narratives. In the end, essentially the only argument fielded by pro-hunting advocates was invocation of the North American Model of Wildlife Management/Conservation. This argument made no obvious linkages between implementation of this doctrine and the greater public good—or even efficacious effects on grizzly bears or grizzly bear-human relations. Rather, the emphasis was on the putative heroic status of hunters, their mythic history of contributions to conservation, and, in the end, the notion that society somehow owed them the right to kill grizzly bears for sport. And all of this, in turn, was supposed to somehow translate into something good for bears and people, writ large. How was not clear.

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More broadly, arguments for and against hunting grizzly bears were typically fielded under the guise of scientific evidence—yet often without being substantively informed by science. People's orientation to trophy hunting is clearly deeply rooted in identities, worldviews, and other social-psychological phenomena. Evidence rarely plays a dominant role. 

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