POWELL — As news of translocations of two grizzly bears broke, few realized the amount of hard work — on the phone, on paper and in the wilderness — it takes to make such a feat happen.
It is touted as a step to increase genetic diversity in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s population of its most charismatic creature. But if you think all they had to do was load a couple of bears in a truck and drive six to eight hours to release them in and near Yellowstone National Park, you’d be wrong.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s large carnivore team worked with its counterparts in the three states with appropriate grizzly bear habitat to develop the protocols and work through logistics, as well as the actual release in Wyoming.
The translocations were the result of a commitment between Wyoming, Montana and Idaho under the Tri-State Memorandum of Agreement. The agreement was established to ensure the long-term genetic diversity of the GYE’s grizzly bear population and secure a genetic connection between the two areas, according to a news release by Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon.