Grizzly Wars: The Public Fight over the Great Bear

Nonfiction
9 maps, 1 illustration
6 x 9, 288 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-59766-037-2
cloth: $29.95 $20.00

Long a magnificent symbol of the wild, grizzly bears are perhaps the most controversial species in North America. In Grizzly Wars, David Knibb explores the policy and political issues involved in managing and attempting to save any species, especially one that can pose a grave danger to human beings. The author looks at the grizzly bear recovery areas on both sides of the border, from the North Cascades to the Northern Rockies.

Writing with remarkable evenhandedness, Knibb examines the key issues in each region, including the heated debate over the decision to remove Yellowstone’s grizzlies from the list of threatened species and the question of whether the bears in each area can responsibly be regarded as a distinct population. Knibb highlights the critical role of state governments in the recovery process, as well as the importance of providing habitat that would link the areas in which grizzly populations are presently confined. He also underscores our need to cooperate with Canada in the management of grizzlies who inhabit areas along the border.

A resident of the Seattle area, David Knibb has a background in environmental law, forestry, and wildlife management. An activist on resource conservation and environment issues in the Mountain West for some forty-five years, he is also the author of Backyard Wilderness, a chronicle of the congressional battle over the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington’s Cascades.

“If you think that you are tough enough, enter Knibb’s expository terrain, which reveals the actions of the governmental authorities who decide whether to save big, beautiful animals.  That truth isn’t as beautiful as a grizzly, but it is no less compelling, no less emblematic of the dangers involved.”

—John Byers, author of Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn

“One of the Bush administration's most dire decisions was the removal of Yellowstone's grizzlies from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act–a fraudulent move that has been challenged in court on legal grounds detailed in Grizzly Wars. The next few years are critical. This important book tells us why.”

—Doug Peacock, author of The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears

“Knibb is one of the few conservation writers I know who have the ability to write so clearly about this complicated and fascinating subject."

—Brock Evans, President, Endangered Species Coalition

“Grizzly Wars chronicles in careful and admirably unbiased detail the events surrounding the listing of grizzly bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and the progress that has been made toward the recovery of these populations. Knibb tells the story of how these events unfolded with a compelling immediacy, almost as if he were there in the conference rooms, meetings, public hearings, offices, and chambers where the fate of these wild creatures was negotiated by those both sympathetic and hostile to the grizzlies continued existence. Weaving the events into a coherent whole, Knibb imparts a keen sense of the implications of this struggle.”

—from the foreword by Lance Craighead, author of Bears of the World