Solstice Alert—The existing Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) route unfairly places hikers and bears in same small alpine meadows in the Yaak at the same time of year. Help support an ethical and scenic re-route that protects bears and hikers, and preserves local use! Write your delegation today!
Dear Supporter,
It’s another hiking season and the matter of the high-volume through-hiker Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) remains unresolved for yet another year. Authorized via rider in 2009 by its attachment to an Omnibus Bill, without input from the Montana delegation, the PNT has proven to be an escalating headache for land management agencies (USFS, DOT, USFWS), local trail users, proposed timber sales (Black Ram). The legalities regarding the trail’s compliance with the Endangered Species Act are very much likewise in question, and the administering manager—Region Six (Portland) of the USFS is eight-plus yearsout of compliance with the enabling legislation that authorized a trail in the first place.
It’s past time for a solution. Bears, hikers, Border Patrol, Search & Rescue, and hiker reprovisioning, water availability (particularly with the increase of global warming), timber accessibility, road traffic issues, are all cascading with the trail’s increasing use as we draw ever-closer to the inevitable situation of locals needing to draw in a lottery to use the dispersed recreation trails in the upper Yaak, and the closure of roads that are currently open in order to compensate for high-volume use (defined by as few as 200 users per year) on that portion of the trail situated in core grizzly habitat.
Dispersed recreation, rather than targeted high-volume recreation is better for the Yaak’s last 25 grizzlies, and for locals, and timber, and hikers alike. Please contact the Montana delegation and urge them to correct this poorly-planned existing route.
The YVFC supports a modified version of the 1980 “Jonkel route,” which take the hikers off the high-speed paved surface of U.S. Highway 37 and gives hikers the option of detouring to the trail towns of Eureka, Libby and Troy, while avoiding the core habitat of the Yaak’s tiny population of grizzlies. For more on this issue, please check out the science by visiting our web page, where the initial Jonkel report to Congress can be found, as well as the 2018 analysis by Dr. Lance Craighead and Wayne McCrory. And be sure also to check out on our website Dr. David Mattson’s YouTube presentation on Yaak grizzlies. Dr. Mattson’s most recent analysis shows that losing even one female every other year will result in the extinction of Yaak’s grizzlies within the next 20 years.
The burden should not fall upon these last 25 bears to prove they can recover with a high-volume through-trail. The first-do-no-harm should be applied to such an endangered population. It is the ethical and responsible decision, and the science backs it up. Yaak grizzlies (25) are not Glacier grizzlies (750). The Glacier ecosystem has 2.5 million acres of permanently protected wildlands; the Yaak has zero. Glacier has vast alpine meadows—the limiting factor, along with distance-from-humans.
Reasons for the Pacific Northwest Trail re-route are legion, they can be most simplified by these two critical points: it’s in no one’s best interest for the trail to bisect designated core grizzly habitat, and the re-route should provide the greatest economic opportunities for Lincoln County by utilizing the trail towns of Libby and Troy.
The YVFC continues to work with all local businesses in Lincoln County to support local sustainable employment that connects to jobs in the woods and biological restoration and integrity.
Please send your letter of support for a re-route to the delegation at the addresses—a copy and paste will work best. Thank you for your continued support to help protect the Yaak’s last grizzlies! They’re counting on us. They’re counting on you. We’re counting on you. Thank you.
Contact Information:
Senator Jon Tester: www.tester.senate.gov/contact
Senator Steve Daines: Joshua_Sizemore@daines.Senate.gov
Tripp.McKemey@mail.house.gov and Brian.Semple@mail.house.gov
info@yaakvalley.org
Becky.Blanchard@usfs.fed.gov
THANK YOU! YOUR VOICE MATTERS!