We’ve had lots of supporters asking this past week: “So, what’s going to happen now?” While we don’t know for sure how the coming months will unfold, and what the hunt will mean for GYE grizzlies, WWA’s Conservation Director Roger Hayden has rounded up a quick summary of what we do know at this point.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has opened hunting of grizzly bears for the first time in more than 40 years. The department is making available for hunting 22 bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, including areas surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
Wyoming Wildlife Advocates and other conservation organizations are strongly opposed to trophy hunting grizzly bears.
The application period for grizzly bear hunting licenses closed July 16. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department received approximately 7,000 applications for licenses.
Some of those applications were from people who do not plan to hunt, but will sit on the license to prevent the bears being killed for the time in the field they’re assigned. Several individuals and groups have offered to reimburse these folks for the $600 in-state license fee. Jackson photographer Tom Mangelsen has agreed to pay half of the license cost for anyone who agrees not to hunt. And one group, “Shoot “Em With a Camera,” also has offered to provide some level of reimbursement as well.
The results of the license lottery will be announced at 1o:00 a.m. on July 26, 2018.
The hunt season runs from September 15 to November 15. If you are chosen through a lottery process to receive a license, you will be assigned a 10-day period to hunt. In your license application, you would have chosen where you want to hunt. Those areas would be six hunt areas in the Demographic Monitoring Area or outside the DMA. If you chose areas inside the DMA, you can choose any of six areas. Once quotas are reached in any of those areas, you have to choose another area. 12 grizzlies, 11 males and one female, can be hunted in these combined areas.
If a female grizzly is killed in any of the hunt areas in the DMA, the hunt will be closed.
Outside the DMA, in hunt area 7, another 12 grizzlies can be killed. There are no restrictions on how many females can be killed.
WWA will add more information as we gather it. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
