NRCC helps catalyze community-based conservation effort in the Swan Valley
(news: 2.22.10)
NRCC provided funding through our research associate Seth Wilson to help catalyze a new community-based effort in the Swan Valley, Montana, that is addressing human-caused mortality of grizzly bears in a critically important spot.
The Swan Valley Bear Resources (SVBR) is a community organization whose goal is to decrease human/bear conflicts by organizing educational events, offering bear-resistant products, and facilitating and implementing cooperative electric fencing projects with local landowners to secure bear attractants associated with rural/agricultural ways of life. With support from NRCC and a variety of other partners, including the landowners themselves, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, Cenex, and CLB Custom Landworks, SVBR recently completed two fencing projects.
On two key pieces of private property, volunteers and property owners built electric fences and gates with hot wire across the top in order to deter conflicts with grizzly bears. NRCC contributed $2278 to post pounding and materials for the first project, where two sheep had been lost to a grizzly bear. That bear was relocated to Glacier National Park but subsequently sighted again within a quarter mile of the property - luckily after the electric fencing had been installed!
The second project area had not yet experienced any conflict, but was located on a key movement corridor for grizzly bears. Additionally, inadequate fencing and unsecured attractants provided impetus to place this project on the priority list. NRCC contributed $3592.46 to post pounding and materials in order to get this area secured.
Research and management data from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicate that the Swan Valley provides important grizzly bear habitat and is an important grizzly bear linkage corridor between the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and the Mission Mountain Wilderness. Some of the same research has also indicated that the Swan Valley has become a mortality sink within the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear population. As a result, SVBR recognizes the importance of reducing bear conflicts and mortality, which directly and indirectly result from bears becoming food conditioned and/or habituated in the Swan Valley. NRCC is pleased to be able to support research associate Seth Wilson and his colleagues at SVBR in their work to secure habitat for grizzly bears in northern Montana.