Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. It may seem like I've been taking a break and maybe I did take a break.

Covering the presidential elections left me feeling like I'd lost hope in America and the entire world and that can only go on for so long.

It's not much of a story, the bitter ending.

So a few weeks ago I decided to do a story about grizzly bears because grizzly bears are the

ultimate symbol of wilderness and I believe there's hope in wilderness.

Specifically it would be a story about the battle over management of the

Greater Yellowstone Grizzly Bear, the bears that live in and around Yellowstone National Park, a huge area,

ten times bigger than the park itself,

three times the size of the state of Vermont,

it's called the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The bears there have been. the

bear's there have been protected from hunting and human encroachment since

1975 when they were placed on the list of endangered species.

At that time, their population was about 200.

But now it's up to about 700,

and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

is planning to take them off the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to take them off the list soon, probably

by the end of the year.

They say it's a success story.

The federal government protected the bear under the Endangered Species Act and the bear came back.

Time to delist the grizzly and return their management to the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, which will all then allow

trophy hunts of the bear and perhaps seek profits from commercial developments in the bear's

habitat.

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