On Tuesday and Wednesday, IGBC meets in Missoula. Its agenda includes discussion of what the group of federal, state, tribal and private bear managers should do next, along with an update on a near-record level of grizzly deaths from cars, trains, hunters and other mishaps.

The meetings come at an unsettled time for grizzly bear recovery. U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen’s September remand of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly delisting canceled scheduled grizzly trophy hunts in Wyoming and Idaho, and put in limbo plans to publish a similar delisting rule for grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE).

In October, a young male grizzly was captured near a Stevensville golf course on the edge of the Bitterroot Recovery Area, which is part of the overall strategy for restoring grizzlies but currently lacks any resident bears. Montana FWP bear managers released it on the southern fringe of the NCDE, because they had no prepared release sites in the Bitterroot.

Nevertheless, the bear’s appearance renewed discussion of an approved-but-unfunded 2000 federal plan to transplant grizzlies in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness as well as the challenges of building links between the Greater Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide and Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk recovery areas.