LTE: Celebrating Grizzly Bears

It’s too rare these days that we have cause for celebration in wildlife conservation—but alas, it looks like grizzly bears will finally have a future (and not just a tragic past) in the North Cascades! Last weekend, the Seattle Times printed my letter to the editor responding to this eagerly awaited news.

In late April, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced their decision to reintroduce grizzlies to the wild place that stole my heart when I moved to Washington in 2007. The North Cascades Ecosystem comprises ~9,800 square miles on the U.S. side of the border as well as extensive wildlands in adjacent British Columbia. When you’re hiking in this vast wilderness, you can’t help but think, grizzlies belong here. Because they do.

Robert (Long) and I were part of a team that surveyed for grizzlies over multiple summers in the early 2010s, but we and our colleagues detected only black bears. The last documentation of a grizzly in the Washington portion of the North Cascades occurred in 1996. If all goes as planned, the next documentation should be coming soon!

Click the button to read my LTE. And below, I’ve also listed some of my past writings and interviews about grizzly bears and rewilding.

Read LTE