The Historic Grizzly

[brotherbear]

Continued...
Bud Moore...
I was the ranger at the Powell Ranger District when the grizzly officially became extinct in the Lochsa.
That was back in the 1950s, and in those days the idea of bringing back the grizzly was as foreign as putting a man on the moon. The philosophy among Forest Service land managers concerning the grizzly was: "When they're gone, they're gone."
Something died in me when I made my annual wildlife report and added a zero next to the grizzly bear. I really wasn't interested in being in a place where the grizzly was absent. It wasn't the same. It didn't have the same feel. The grizzly was gone. What a tragedy. Not only that, but the Lochsa was being roaded up with logging and recreation roads. Then we had this big spruce budworm epidemic. The worms were harming young spruce trees, so the Forest Service sprayed those areas with DDT. We killed the budworms alright, but we killed all the other insects too, and the birds that fed on them, and the frogs and the fish in the waters where the DDT ended up. Six years later, Rachel Carson would write her epic book, Silent Spring, which sounded the alarm about the effects on the food chain of pesticides and other chemicals. For me, it was time to leave. It just wasn't the same anymore. Reply