Take action on behalf of grizzly bears and their habitat
Flawed Science
This section examines how current science is being practiced in the grizzly bear arena, and the outcomes of this practice. You can download a report immediately below that offers a comprehensive critique of scientific products and practices by Yellowstone's Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. A similar critique of science produced by Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Parks can be found in Heart of the Grizzly Bear Nation. Tabs at the bottom of this page will take you to a series of essays that provide a more approciable introduction to the flawed practices, numbers, and concepts typifying grizzly bear research in the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountains.
In Corrupt Practice, we examine the partisan nature of the scientific endeavor, with an emphasis on the Greater Yellowstone grizzly.
In Bogus Numbers, we look at how bears are counted and trends determined. This is important because of the role that population numbers have been playing in the debate of removal of endangered species protections.
In Flawed Concepts, we look at problems in the conceptual underpinnings of the science, including social science, that is being used to manage grizzlies, with the particular aim of delisting grizzlies in Yellowstone and Glacier.
Dr. David Mattson produced a report in 2023 entitled Flawed Science that provides a comprehensive critique of not only the scientific products published by Yellowstone's Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) during 2006-2023, but also the practices that led to and allowed for publication of this fundamentally flawed body of research. The IGBST's assessment of factors driving past and prospective future changes in demography and behavior of Yellowstone’s GYE grizzly bears was fatally compromised, including by equating omnivory with indifference to food quality; misrepresenting abundance of whitebark pine seeds; failing to account for temporal and spatial aspects of major environmental change; failing to consider the emergent effect of dietary changes on risk of death; using a suspect measure of bear density; failing to adequately account for bias introduced by increasing search effort and sightability of bears; misconstruing the concepts of density-dependence and carrying capacity; underspecifying models and hypotheses; and maintaining monopolistic control over scientific inquiry in a highly politicized environment. For more detail, click on the image at left to download the full report
Get up to speed with the ACTUAL science on grizzly bears
Get up to speed on the latest science and watch this talk by grizzly bear expert Dr. David Mattson on the Changing World of the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear, given at the Jackson Wildlife Art Museum on July 15, 2015. The presentation summarizes an immense amount of research on this charismatic species, and underscores the need for caution as the grizzly bear faces unprecedented changes.
This 30 minutes is well worth your time!