Karl Puckett

kpuckett@greatfallstribune.com

A Wednesday work session of the Fish and Wildlife Commission at Montana WILD in Helena will be audio streamed live due to interest in the topics on the agenda, mostly in a plan to hunt grizzly bears.

Interest in grizzly bear hunting regulations proposed for the Yellowstone National Park area prompted the decision to provide the audio and video stream, said Greg Lemon, a spokesman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

“Given the interest, the director thought it would be a good to audio stream it,” Lemon said of Director Jeff Hagener.

The meeting will be audio streamed live on the FWP website.

A live video feed of the meeting also will be shown at FWP regional offices, with the exception of the Region 7 office in Miles City where only audio will be available.

Grizzlies are a threatened species, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove protections for the roughly 700 Yellowstone ecosystem bears and turn management over to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

As part of the delisting process, the Fish and Wildlife Service is requiring the states to outline future grizzly bear hunting seasons.

Delisting has yet to be proposed for the 960 grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in northwestern and northcentral Montana, and the state’s hunting plans are for only Yellowstone-area bears.

Montana’s hunting plan for Yellowstone-area bears calls for dividing land in Montana outside of the park into seven grizzly bear management units with each unit having its own harvest quota. In order to protect females with young, no harvest of any bear that is with another bear or bears would be allowed. Hunting will not be allowed inside the national park.

Proposed season dates are March 15 to April 20 and Nov. 10 to Dec. 15.

A quota of licenses that would be distributed by drawing.

The commission will not make any decisions at the work session and no public participation or comment will be taken.

The work session starts at noon and goes until 5 p.m.

The regular May Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting begins at 8 a.m. Thursday.

At that meeting, commissioners will decide whether to release the state’s Yellowstone-area hunting proposal for public comment. A final decision on the hunting plan would be made in July after consideration of the public comment, Lemon said.

Also on agendas of both meetings are a Beaverhead River water quality investigation, catch and release outreach and archery technology.

At Thursday’s regular meeting, commissioners also are expected to act on a tri-state memorandum of agreement with Idaho and Wyoming for grizzly bear management, 2016 wolf season quotas, transplanting sharp-tailed grouse from east of the Continental Divide to west of the Divide and purchasing inholdings in the Sun River, Blackleaf and Beartooth wildlife management areas.

Follow Karl Puckett on Twitter @GFTrib_KPuckett.

For more information

For the full agenda and background on the scheduled topics for the Fish and Wildlife Commission work session Wednesday and its regular meeting Thursday, go to the FWP website at http://fwp.mt.gov/; under “Quick Links” click “Commission.” Montana WILD is located at 2668 Broadwater Ave. in Helena, next to Spring Meadow Lake State Park off Highway 12 West. For the link to the audio streaming of the meetings go to http://fwp.mt.gov/ and look under “What’s trending.” Live streaming of the meetings will be shown at regional FWP offices including Region 4 at 4600 Giant Springs Road, Great Falls.