Montana

As Grizzly Bear Train Mortalities Spike, BNSF Mitigation Funds are Years Overdue

Another spate of train-caused grizzly bear deaths in northwest Montana has drawn attention to an overdue federal conservation plan that includes $2.6 million in funding from BNSF Railway to mitigate bear-human conflicts on the landscape

BY TRISTAN SCOTT
OCTOBER 4, 2023



A grizzly bear in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem seen on Sept. 12, 2021. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

On Sept. 18, Justine Vallieres was setting traps to capture a pair of food-conditioned grizzly bears breaking into cabins up the North Fork when she got word that a third bear, also a grizzly, had been killed on the train tracks near Stryker, clear across the Whitefish Range. As the wildlife conflict management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) in northwest Montana, Vallieres remembers it as one of countless instances she wishes she could have been in two places at once. ... Lacking that superpower, the bear biologist hopped into her government pickup truck and drove two hours over the mountain pass to the site of the train strike, where she found a dead 25-year-old male grizzly and set to work documenting the federally protected bear’s death.

“We get stretched thin,” Vallieres said. “Up here in northwest Montana, we have the highest density of bear-human conflicts in the state, and we’re putting in 60- to 80-hour work weeks responding to them. So yeah, having to go investigate a grizzly bear killed on the train tracks adds to the burden and distracts us from our efforts to keep bears and humans safe.”

Ten days earlier, on Sept. 8, Vallieres was wrapping up her workday around dark when she received a mortality signal from a 10-year-old radio-collared sow grizzly whose coordinates help wildlife officials monitor population trends. Its location? A BNSF Railway Company trestle spanning the Flathead River near Coram. ... “When I saw that the mortality sensor was near the train tracks, I knew I had to get there as soon as possible,” Vallieres said. “We’ve had a few on that train trestle in Coram. It’s so high up that they either try to jump off or outrun the train. And they can’t outrun the train. It would be nice if BNSF would install some motion-sensor alarms across the trestles to scare the bears so they won’t keep trying to cross them.”

For decades, the freight trains trundling over Marias Pass toward Glacier National Park and the Great Bear Wilderness along a 206-mile stretch of tracks between Shelby and Trego have posed a threat to the grizzlies living there, particularly when a derailment causes a grain spill, or a train-killed deer or livestock carcass draws the bears onto the busy tracks. And for decades, a host of state, federal and tribal wildlife management agencies, as well as non-governmental organizations and conservation groups, have worked with the railroad to mitigate the hazards to threatened and endangered species like grizzlies, with varying degrees of effectiveness.



A BNSF Railway oil train crosses a trestle along the Middle Fork Flathead River. Beacon file photo

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