While ranchers across the West welcomed this month’s presidential order to review the legal status of livestock-killing wolves, more cattle have been killed this year by grizzly bears than by wolves in areas where the predator species overlap.
According to Montana’s Livestock Loss Compensation Board, 34 cattle have been determined killed by grizzlies as of July 1. The board has paid $89,000 in claims for the first half of 2026. That compares with 21 depredations by wolves so far this year, with about $25,000 paid to ranchers whose cattle were killed by wolves. September and October are generally among the highest months for livestock losses to grizzlies, which are feeding heavily before hibernating for the winter.
Last year, according to the board, 87 Montana cattle were killed by grizzlies, compared to 21 by wolves.
The situation is more dire in Wyoming, where the state’s $500,000 wildlife-damage budget is expected to be depleted for the second straight year. According to reporting by Cowboy State Daily, last year Wyoming Game and Fish paid out nearly $1 million to ranchers whose livestock were killed by grizzly bears. The compensation fund managed by the Wyoming Animal Damage Management Board is expected to pay out nearly as much this year, as grizzlies are moving farther into cattle country.
When other expenses are factored, including compensation for livestock losses from other predators, the cost of preventative measures, and personnel and agency costs, Wyoming’s wildlife-damage program costs over $3 million per year, according to reporting.
Idaho’s Office of Species Conservation, meanwhile, has paid out about $60,000 in grizzly-related compensation in the state’s two grizzly recovery zones, around Yellowstone National Park and the Panhandle. Livestock losses in Idaho attributed to wolves run nearly double those attributed to grizzlies.
The loss of livestock to grizzlies in the Rockies has unified ranchers and wildlife agencies to call for loosening federal oversight of the protected species. In July, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced plans to “increase management flexibility” for grizzly bears in places where the species has met or exceeded federal recovery benchmarks.
Shortly after Burgum’s announcement — attended by the governors and wildlife-agency directors of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, — Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks convened a town-hall meeting in Choteau, just outside Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. The wilderness is the core of what’s called the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly management zone, home of the highest population and densities of grizzlies in the Lower 48. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates the NCDE holds some 1,100 grizzlies.
The Choteau meeting was dominated by ranchers calling for more support in dealing with livestock-killing bears.
“We have an emergency situation with these bears,” one rancher whose family ranches near the NCDE told MFWP director Christy Clark. “We make a call and they take care of it temporarily. Then they [bears] come back. It’s ongoing. I appreciate what you guys are trying to do, but we need to advance this.”
Not only are livestock depredation instances increasing, but as cattle push into record-high prices, the monetary hit of each lost head is increasing. Ranchers told Clark that the state’s compensation fund isn’t keeping pace with livestock market rates.
Last week, a bowhunter was injured when he was charged by a grizzly bear south of Choteau.
On Tuesday, state and federal wildlife officials killed an adult sow grizzly that was feeding on a cow carcass about 3 miles from the site of the attack. Wildlife officials told media outlets they couldn’t confirm whether the bear that was removed was the individual that injured the bowhunter, but confirmed the sow had killed and was feeding on three cattle in the area.
Tracking Conflict
Sources can’t agree whether this year’s spike in cattle being killed by grizzlies is attributable to higher bear populations, a reported crash in wild chokecherry and huckleberry production, or the movement of grizzlies into cattle country. The increase is likely a combination of all three factors.
Despite Burgum’s comments in July about federal and state agencies working more closely together to resolve grizzly bear conflicts, tracking livestock depredation in real time is frustrated by layers of reporting, says Greg Lemon, a spokesman for MFWP.
“The compensation fund requires verification, which takes time,” he says. “And even though we have a statewide grizzly bear management plan, we still look at griz data on an ecosystem-by-ecosystem basis, which makes it hard to consolidate data.”
Montana maintains a public-facing dashboard that provides updates on grizzly bear conflicts across the state. Every incident is reported to the dashboard, but Lemon notes that data isn’t uploaded until the incident is resolved, which can take weeks, and sometimes longer if federal wildlife agents are involved in the response.
But Chris Servheen, who served as the federal USFWS grizzly bear recovery coordinator for 35 years and now serves as a technical advisor for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, notes that it’s incorrect to suggest that state wildlife agencies don’t work closely with their federal partners.
“State bear managers have been managing conflict grizzly bears for about 40 years,” he says. “They consult with USFWS on any removals, but there has never been a case when the state bear managers wanted to remove a conflict bear and the USFWS said they could not. That means that almost all chronic livestock-killing bears are promptly killed.”
Servheen notes that only about one in four of all presumed grizzly depredations on livestock are confirmed.
“USDA Wildlife Services says that verified grizzly kills are about 27 percent of all the grizzly depredation reports they receive,” he says. “Many people report grizzly depredations that are not, in fact, grizzly depredations. This contributes to the misleading conclusion that grizzly depredations are a big issue in Montana.”
Management Implications
That conclusion, that grizzlies are marauding cattle across their shared range, is driving the most strident voices that call for grizzlies to be delisted and managed by state agencies, which presumably would be more responsive to ranchers and landowners.
Much of the debate over future management of grizzly bears has centered on which level of government — federal endangered species managers or state wildlife managers — are best equipped to both keep grizzly bear populations above recovery benchmarks and reduce conflicts with humans and livestock.
But increasingly, given the cost of not only managing grizzlies but compensating ranchers for livestock loss, the discussion has turned to budgets. Would it be cheaper in the long run for states to manage grizzly bears, possibly using managed hunts to remove depredating bears rather than paying federal agents or state game wardens to do the job?
The model for state management parallels how we manage bighorn sheep, or elk, or black bears, says advocates for state control.
Selling grizzly bear hunting licenses could raise needed funds to manage bears before they cause conflicts, plus give states a ready tool — licensed hunters and landowners — to remove grizzlies when they do cause conflicts.
The USFWS, which currently has management oversight of grizzly bears across the Northern Rockies, proposed a middle ground in its July announcement.
The proposal, which took public comment through mid-August, would give Montana more flexibility in the ecosystems — the NCDE and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — where grizzlies have achieved population objectives. Meanwhile, federal management would continue in the two areas, the Bitterroot and Cabinet/Yaak along the Idaho border, where recovery metrics haven’t been achieved.
In the Northern Continental Divide and Yellowstone ecosystems, the proposal would give Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks management of bears as long as the state followed the population objectives and mortality thresholds of the federal plan. On the ground, that means more latitude for the state to deal with conflict bears, including those that kill livestock.
If the proposed rule is codified, state co-management could start as soon as next year.
But we can expect grizzly bear conflicts to increase, not decrease, no matter which agency manages them. That’s because the USFWS’s grizzly bear recovery plan calls for maintaining and increasing populations in the core NCDE and Yellowstone area so that bears disperse into adjacent habitat. Many of those landscapes, currently unoccupied by grizzlies, are fully occupied by commodity livestock. In these places, measures to reduce conflicts before they occur may be the most durable path to conserving both working ranches and apex carnivores.
Related: After Riling Cattle Ranchers, Trump Offers Up Wolf Delisting. Here’s What It Means
“We have many tools available to reduce or prevent conflicts before they occur,” notes Servheen. “But they have to be implemented. [Bear advocates] don’t want grizzlies to kill livestock any more than the producers do. We share that interest and work hard to reduce such depredations.”
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