Suggestions
		Here are two ways to help ensure the grizzly bear's survival: Tell the Forest Service to protect grizzly habitat in Montana's Kootenai National Forest. Donate to our Grizzly Campaign to stop the Bush administration from stripping the grizzly bear of its federal protection.
		Scrapbook
		Some pictures from my trip: One of many spectacular views of the valley. Steve explaining the lifecycle of a pair of discarded antlers. A fresh paw print that we discovered moments before hearing the bear.
		Resources
		For more about grizzlies: Grizzly Bears in Peril - the hub for all our grizzly information on the BioGems website Grizzly Video - a brief overview of the threat to grizzlies, plus some great photos of the bears and their babies Why Grizzly Bears Matter - an interview with NRDC's grizzly expert, Louisa Willcox

As the editor of BioGems News, I've been updating NRDC Members and activists about the plight of Yellowstone's grizzly bears for the past few years. But it wasn't until I made my first trip to Yellowstone, and experienced the bears with my own eyes and ears, that I really felt the precariousness of their existence at my core.

In early May I joined a small group of NRDC donors, staff and some of the country's top wildlife experts for a four-night stay at a working ranch along Yellowstone's northern boundary, at the foot of the towering Gallatin Mountain Range. Our visit was carefully timed to coincide with the moment in spring when grizzlies, wolves, elk and other wildlife congregate with their babies on the lush, grass-covered ranges of the park's Lamar Valley.

On my first day exploring, I hiked off-trail with a group of nine others, just east of Slough Creek. From the road, we trudged up a hillside, making our way through clusters of sagebrush. Steve Gehman, a naturalist who has lived in the Yellowstone area for some 20 years, was in the lead. Louisa Willcox, director of NRDC's Wild Bears Project and one of the country's leading grizzly bear experts, brought up the rear.

We took our time, pausing to hear Steve or Louisa describe the lifecycle of a pair of discarded antlers or relate the Native American story behind a fir cone's delicate shape. To our left below, Slough Creek meandered back and forth, forming a pattern of oxbows. Lone buttercups, shooting stars, blue bells, biscuitroot (good eating for bears and humans) and spring beauties sprang out spontaneously against the dull hues of the sagebrush and juniper bushes.

As late afternoon approached, we continued to climb, entering a gully dotted with stands of Douglas fir and spruce. After about an hour of hiking, my attention moved from the landscape to conversations I was having with members of the group, about the history of the park, the BioGems Initiative and NRDC's other work. My consciousness of the natural world around me gradually began to dim.

Then, suddenly, Steve stopped and motioned for us to be quiet. An alien sound echoed down the slope, hushing us one by one. I exchanged stunned looks with my companions. "It's a bear," Steve said, "and it's close." I glanced at Louisa to gauge her reaction before taking my next breath; she looked alert but totally calm.

Absolutely still, we listened in silence to the bear's drawn-out cry -- more of a bawl than a roar, Steve remarked later. It was throaty and all-pervading, but had an unexpectedly desperate edge to it, like the wail of a siren.

We proceeded slowly, scanning the tangle of fallen trees and brush before us for movement. A few minutes later, we caught sight of a grizzly bear mother hustling two yearling cubs away from us, about a hundred yards up the slope. Within a few seconds, they vanished.

Listening to the mother bear frantically calling her cubs to safety, the struggle of these elusive creatures vividly came to life for me. The slowest reproducing mammals in North America, grizzlies breed only every three years and spend as much as four years rearing their cubs. Many female bears don't succeed in replacing themselves during their lifetimes: Not only must they keep their young safe from bullets and roads, but also from their own fathers and other male bears eager to render the nursing mothers fertile again by killing their cubs.

To hear and see a mother bear and her young at such close range is a rare treat in Yellowstone. But bear sightings are more common today than they were 30 years ago, when only a couple of hundred bears roamed the park. Since then, protection from hunting and habitat loss under the Endangered Species Act has boosted the number to roughly 500 or 600 bears.

As Louisa says, the grizzlies of Yellowstone are "the animals that died and came back to life," and each spring they reenact their inspiring survival tale when they emerge, revitalized, from their dens after months without food. Their ability to rebound from dormancy teaches us about our own power to reinvent ourselves; at the same time, their size and strength humbles us and forces us to reevaluate our arrogant approach to nature.

For Louisa, the bears symbolize America -- they evoke the love that she has for this country. Like a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the original copy of the Constitution, a visit to Yellowstone to see the bears reminds us of the need to protect what is sacred to us as Americans. They are one of the only remaining natural vestiges of our frontier past, icons of the last wild places where we can go to reflect and take respite. Sharing the wilderness with them keeps us alert and aware of what's going on around us -- our eyes trained on the bend in the trail and our ears listening out for every twig snap.

If Yellowstone's grizzlies were to vanish, a very long shadow would fall across Yellowstone and our nation as a whole -- a risk which is palpable to me now. Yet the Bush administration has proposed removing these bears from the endangered species list as early as 2007. Stripping them of life-saving protections now could drive them back to the brink of extinction.

Please speak out for these bears -- by taking regular action as a BioGems Defender and by making your friends and family aware of their ongoing struggle.

To protest the Bush administration's dangerous delisting proposal and to take a closer look at Yellowstone's grizzlies, visit our Grizzly Bears in Peril BioGems feature.

August 2006