美国国家公共电台 NPR Ranchers Sour On Trump Administration Over Proposal To Bring Back Grizzly Bears

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Grizzly 1 bears may be on their way back to rural Washington state. The Trump 2 administration is thinking about reintroducing the predators 3 just south of the Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle. And rural farmers and ranchers are gearing up for a fight. During a reporting trip there, NPR's Kirk Siegler discovered the looming 4 battle is about a lot more than grizzly bears.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE 5: This is a story about reintroducing a grizzly bear to a state where they were eradicated 6 years ago, but it's also about something a lot bigger. Listen to these two polar opposite views of grizzlies 7 to understand why.

JOE SCOTT: Sheer inspiration and wonder - that's what grizzly bears do for people.

SIEGLER: This is environmentalist Joe Scott who lives in Bellingham, Wash., north of Seattle. Next is Jim Detro, who lives on the more rural, east side of the Cascade 8 Mountains.

JIM DETRO: I can run out on my back porch and scream and scare the hell out of a black bear. You're not going to do that with a grizzly bear.

SIEGLER: They'll hunt you down, he says. Now, playing out in these two vastly different views of the same bear is the country's urban-rural divide, or at least a version of it. First, let's start in Jim Detro's home town, remote Okanogan, Wash. He's a county commissioner 9 here. And in his office, there are stuffed cougars 10, bighorn sheep and deer he's hunted mounted on the walls. In a shoebox he keeps in his desk drawer, there's also a giant mold of a bear claw.

DETRO: There we go, but that's a plaster Paris cast of the Tongue Creek 11 grizzler (ph).

SIEGLER: The Tongue Creek grizzly, an infamous 12 griz (ph) that he says terrorized this area in 1958.

DETRO: They hunted that bear, and nobody ever got him, and he was just on a rampage through here killing 13 livestock 14 and eventually left.

SIEGLER: Now, Detro is worried that if the feds reintroduce the bears, there will be more economic havoc 15 in this river-cut valley with its cattle but also its lucrative 16 fruit orchards 17 and tourism and vacation home industries. He says grizzly reintroduction to Washington state is being pushed by deep-pocketed environmentalists on the other side of the Cascades 18 in Seattle.

DETRO: They have this grandiose 19 idea that there's this vast wilderness 20 out there that's part of theirs because it's public land that they can go to, but we that live here don't have a right to live here.

SIEGLER: Detro says people in cities like to cut checks for feel-good environmental causes, but they're not the ones who actually live out here off the land and have to deal with the consequences.

DETRO: Well, a friend of mine that's a rancher coined a phrase asphalite. You know what that is? That's a person that is born and raised on concrete and asphalt, has no common sense whatsoever 21 and gets up every single morning and drinks the green Kool-Aid.

SIEGLER: It can feel like two parallel universes when you travel from rural Okanogan County over the mountains to the more well-heeled Seattle area. It's a place famous for its liberal activism and Patagonia-clad population that flocks to the Cascades to backcountry ski or hike.

SCOTT: People in urban areas do spend a lot of time in places where the bears will be.

SIEGLER: Joe Scott, the environmentalist we heard from earlier, is showing me the edge of what would be the grizzly bear recovery zone in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

SCOTT: Yeah, that gives you a little preview into what's in the backcountry. You can see steep mountains and heavy snows in the background.

SIEGLER: Scott takes offense 22 to the argument that people who live in more urban places are somehow disconnected from these wild areas. He's skied, camped and bushwhacked his way through these rugged 23 mountains, and he says there's plenty of room for a couple hundred grizzlies.

SCOTT: Grizzly bears are not man-eaters (laughter).

SIEGLER: Scott says grizzlies avoid humans unless we give them a reason to be a nuisance, like when we leave trash out. And in states to the east of here that have grizzlies, like around Yellowstone or Glacier 24 Parks, problem bears tend to get dealt with swiftly.

SCOTT: You know, we hear a lot from people that this is just another federal intrusion to push an urban agenda. Well, first of all, the federal government is following the law.

SIEGLER: Federal law says a species at the brink 25 of extinction 26 must be protected. Now, the environmentalists got to go to the invite-only announcement by President Trump's interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, that the grizzly plan was being restarted.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE: (Clapping).

RYAN ZINKE: I played for the Ducks.

SIEGLER: Over on the other side of the urban-rural divide on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, people told me they weren't invited and felt blindsided. They thought this Obama-era plan was dead.

CRAIG VERASJKA: What the hell do we do? You know, we thought we had somebody on our side, and now Zinke pulls this on us. We're not happy.

SIEGLER: This is Craig Verasjka, a rancher and enthusiastic Trump supporter. He grew up with Jim Detro, the county commissioner who showed me that bear claw print earlier. We're out in one of his pastures where his cows spent the winter.

VERASJKA: They think because I stop with the trailer, they think I'm going to come feed them (laughter) you know?

SIEGLER: And once the snow melts up high, he'll move these cows up into the lush Cascades where they'll graze for the summer near where the grizzlies would be reintroduced. He thinks they'll kill his cows or at the very least keep them stressed and moving, not breeding. Now, Verasjka is so frustrated 27 because he says Secretary Zinke had pledged to better listen to rural voices like his when it comes to public lands decisions.

VERASJKA: I mean, the guy flies to the northwest in a 48-hour period and makes a decision like that, to my knowledge, not consulting a person like myself who spent a lifetime here.

SIEGLER: A Zinke spokeswoman declined an interview request by NPR. But the secretary has said he, quote, "supports the great bear" and in particular its cultural significance to area tribes. And here's where that urban-rural divide issue and how it relates to the grizzly bear debate gets complicated. It's clear not everyone in a city or everyone in a rural area fits neatly 28 on one side of this divide or the other.

LORRIE SUE NELSON: In my language, we say (speaking Salish).

SIEGLER: Before I left rural Okanogan, I met Lorrie Sue Nelson. She's speaking in her native Salish here. Nelson is a descendant of the Colville Tribes of central Washington. They consider the grizzly sacred and want to see it brought back.

NELSON: They have the right to be here before any other species because they were indigenous 29 to this area since the beginning of time.

SIEGLER: A final decision on grizzly reintroduction is expected by the end of the year. Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Okanogan, Wash.