Grizzly Bears In Washington: Plan Would Bring Them Back To Cascades

RENTON, WA - There once was a time when grizzly bears roamed Renton - of course, this was before the city of Renton actually existed.

Grizzly bears were driven out of the Puget Sound area by humans more than a hundred years ago, but this week, federal officials released a plan to reestablish a small number of bears in the North Cascades ecosystem. The draft plan released Thursday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service seeks to increase the grizzly population in the North Cascades National Park to 200.

There are presently only a handful of grizzly bears in the North Cascades - a population so small that it's in danger of going extinct.

The plan includes four options for reestablishing grizzly bears in the North Cascades. Two of the options involve releasing between 10 and 25 bears into the area over a period of years to stimulate the population; the most aggressive option would releases "a sufficient amount of bears" to reach 200 over a period of 25 years. A fourth option would leave the bear population in its present state.

Federal officials will travel around the state over the next month to discuss the plan, and there's a meeting scheduled for Feb. 24 at the Renton Community Center.

Historically, some 100,000 grizzly bears lived in a massive area from the top of Alaska to central Mexico, and from the Pacific Coast to present day Kansas. Today, the grizzly range is confined to western Canada and Alaska, and a few spots in the U.S., like northern Montana and the Yellowstone area.

The grizzly bear was declared an endangered species by Washington in 1980, and the federal government views grizzlies as a threatened species.

You can read the full bear restoration plan on the National Park Service website.

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