Grizzlies, humans can co-exist in North Cascades

I am writing to support restoring grizzly bears to the Northern Cascades ecosystem. I attended the public meeting on grizzly bear restoration in Newhalem during the first week of November where the audience supported bringing grizzles back by a 3 to 1 margin.

We have the opportunity to bring back these magnificent animals which were hunted and trapped into extinction in Washington during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The North Cascades ecosystem is one of the remaining six areas in the lower 48 states that has enough habitat to support a viable population of grizzly bears.

We have seen that grizzly bears and humans can coexist in the lower 48 states.

Currently there are around 1,000 grizzly bears in each of the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems. In these local communities, hikers, hunters, campers and ranchers accept and recognize grizzlies are part of the landscape. Over 5 million tourists visit the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem ever year.

The proposed plan to return grizzlies to the North Cascades offers flexible management tools to reduce, prevent and sometimes respond to human-bear conflicts.

We live in the time of biodiversity extinction and crisis, now is the time to return these iconic animals to the North Cascades.

John Rosapepe

Endangered Species Coalition

Seattle