Protecting the grizzly secures an American heritage

The first Yellowstone grizzly bear I saw surprised me while I was soaking in a hot spring. I jumped up, nearly blacked out from the effect of the hot water and then smashed into the closest tree, opening a 2-inch gash in my forehead. Terrified, I scrambled naked up the tree — a pine that turned out to be no bigger than a Christmas tree. Fortunately, the mother bear and her cubs totally ignored me while I shivered in the 40-degree October air for half an hour — clinging to the upper boughs of the tiny tree, blue and bleeding like some large species of silly bird. Those bears got my attention.

That was 1968, and I had just returned from Vietnam in the middle of my second tour as a Green Beret medic. I was out of sorts with my country and estranged. Not unlike a wounded animal, I crawled back into the wilderness of the northern Rockies, where I ran into the great bears that so dominated the physical and psychic landscape. Self-indulgence is utterly impossible in grizzly country. These bears are things of great beauty; mystery married to danger. They can chew your rear off anytime they want (but they almost never do). It was exactly what I needed — the grizzlies got me out of myself so I could reconnect the threads of my own humanity. I think they saved my life.

During those years, I learned that Yellowstone National Park had fed bears at huge open-pit garbage dumps for decades. In 1968, the park abruptly decided to close those dumps, in defiance of scientists who warned that grizzlies cut off cold turkey would prowl campgrounds and nearby towns in search of their accustomed food. Which is just what the bears did, until they were shot or removed. Within five years, at least 229 grizzlies were killed. By the mid-1970s, Yellowstone's grizzly population plummeted to 200 or so. I was lurking there all those years in Yellowstone, watching from the tree line, sensing what the scientists were confirming: The grizzlies were in a steep and dangerous decline and, without help, even on the road to extinction. In 1975, Yellowstone's grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act as a "threatened" species.

Recently, the Bush administration has proposed stripping the Yellowstone grizzly of this protection. The public comment period ended March 20 (with 250 scientists signing a letter urging continued protection) and now the secretary of interior will decide if the grizzly will be removed from the endangered-species list.