A Grizzly Biologist's Journal  Grizzly JournalBy Mike Madel
This story is featured in Montana Outdoors July–August 2004
For the past 20 years, I have been conducting grizzly bear
research or management for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks along
the Rocky Mountain Front. Since the mid- 1970s, when the species
was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the
population of Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly
bears has been slowly growing and expanding. Now they are
spilling east from the Rockies into their historic low-elevation
native prairie habitat, where they were exterminated in the
early 1900s. As they reoccupy their traditional range, grizzlies
are increasingly coming into conflict with ranchers and others
living along the Front. My job as one of FWP’s four grizzly bear
management biologists is to better understand grizzlies and find
ways to reduce those conflicts. These photos, which I’ve taken
over the past two decades, document some aspects of bear-human
conflict issues. I hope