County balks at funding grizzly fence at landfill

Posted 6/22/17

Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials want to install an electric fence around the landfill south of Cody to keep out grizzlies. Five bears have been captured there since 2010, and Game and Fish staffers know at least one additional bear eluded …

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County balks at funding grizzly fence at landfill

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Park County commissioners say they will not help build a grizzly bear-deterring fence around the county’s Cody landfill unless environmental groups match their contribution, dollar-for-dollar. That “challenge” from the commission appeared to be dead on arrival.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials want to install an electric fence around the landfill south of Cody to keep out grizzlies. Five bears have been captured there since 2010, and Game and Fish staffers know at least one additional bear eluded capture at the landfill last fall.

“As you know, it’s pretty dangerous when bears get human food rewards,” Game and Fish Bear Wise Coordinator Dusty Lasseter told commissioners on Tuesday, adding, “This is pretty much the only landfill in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that is in currently occupied grizzly bear habitat. Everyone else has a transfer station.”

Lasseter’s presentation noted that county officials plan to turn the Cody site into a regional trash hub for the whole Big Horn Basin.

Placing 9,000 feet of electrical fence around the landfill would likely cost a little less than $28,000; Lasseter asked the commission to contribute $7,000, with the rest of the cost being picked up by the Bureau of Land Management, Wyoming Outdoorsmen and potentially the Yellowstone Country Bear Hunters Association.

In a 3-2 vote, the commission instead offered $3,500 — and only if environmental organizations also contributed $3,500.

Commissioner Joe Tilden, who made the motion, said “we, as conservation sportsmen, we’ve funded the recovery of the grizzly bear” — an endangered species that currently is on the brink of being removed from the Endangered Species List.

While saying the fencing project was probably worthwhile, “I get so damn sick and tired of the environmental groups that won’t pony up any money to preserve the bear,” Tilden said. “All they want to do is litigate.”

He said the Sierra Club and Greater Yellowstone Coalition were “kind of off the hook” because they helped fund bear boxes for Shoshone National Forest campgrounds, but “all of those people that are impeding the process of delisting, go ask the Indians if you like — you know?”

Commission Chairman Lee Livingston agreed.

“I’d like to see them put their money where their mouth is,” he said of delisting opponents.

Livingston broke the tie and cast the deciding vote for Tilden’s challenge after the motion was supported by Commissioner Tim French and opposed by Commissioners Jake Fulkerson and Loren Grosskopf; Grosskopf and Fulkerson said they preferred to simply give the Game and Fish $7,000 to help fence the landfill.

Beyond the political debate, a couple commissioners questioned whether the electric fence would do any good, wondering if the bears would simply go into other parts of Cody.

“The bears are coming,” Livingston said, adding, “They’re going to come one way or the other just because of population density, and if they don’t pick up a food reward at the landfill, what keeps them from ... hitting McDonald’s, hitting a dumpster, the guy that forgets to close his garage door and he’s got a sack of dog food there? In my estimation, fencing off the landfill isn’t going to keep the bears from rolling down here through town.”

“And it’s not,” agreed Luke Ellsbury, large carnivore biologist for the Game and Fish in Cody. “I mean, we’ve already got bears everywhere.”

Ellsbury noted grizzlies have already been found along the Powell Highway and are denning in the McCullough Peaks.

“The issue’s definitely bigger than a landfill,” he told commissioners. “But we also need to start somewhere, I guess.”

Lasseter noted that, while grizzlies are listed as an endangered species, they remain under the management of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“As long as the feds are managing them, we’re still going to have to deal with the expanding bear populations. There’s not much we can do,” Lasseter said. But he added that Game and Fish would “absolutely” still want the landfill fenced off if the bears were under state management.

Lasseter said it takes a lot of manpower and energy to capture grizzlies at the landfill, in part because the amount of food available there makes the department’s bait less attractive to them.

The Game and Fish Department will be able to raise the funds for the fence from other entities, Lasseter said, and he indicated he would not be approaching environmental groups, predicting they would say, “Go ask someone else.”

Tilden said he realized the commission’s decision would be a hardship for the department, but “it’s just a statement.”

“That’s all it is,” he said.

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