In the compendium of false claims, an offering from Tim Sheehy, a Montana 2024 Republican Senate candidate, is readily disprovable.
In an interview with Breitbart, the former Navy Seal observed that the state, which he referred to as “flyover country”, did not typically have much in political power – a situation that could change with the balance of power in the US Senate races next year.
“This is a state where there’s not a lot of people,” Sheehy observed. “There’s more cows than people, there’s more bears than people, and we’re not used to having a lot of political clout.”
His assessment about cattle is observably correct. There are estimated to be 2.2 million head in the state this year, according to Department of Agriculture estimates, down from 2.5 million in 2021. The number of people is put at 1.12 million, according to the US Census Bureau.
But Sheehy’s estimate for bear – grizzly and black – is wildly off, notwithstanding that bears don’t respect state boundaries and aren’t easy to count – particularly outside of national parks.
Molly Parks, a carnivore coordinator with Montana’s fish, wildlife and parks (FWP), said there weren’t good numbers for the bear population. A 2011 study put the number of black bears in the state at 13,307 and those numbers are in the process of being updated. Separately, the FWP told the Daily Montanan in July the state had more than 2,100 grizzly bears.
“We definitely don’t have more bears than people in the state,” Parks told the Guardian. “It’s not accurate at all. We have somewhere close to a million people in the state and nowhere close to that number of bear.”
Parks suggested Sheehy’s statement should be read with humor.
But bears are probably on the minds of Montanans after a series of encounters. A female grizzly bear that fatally mauled a woman on a forest trail west of Yellowstone national park in July and attacked a person in Idaho three years ago was killed earlier this month after it broke into a house near West Yellowstone.
A hunter was severely injured in a grizzly attack near Big Sky earlier this month. A week later, a hunter near Fairfield shot and injured a grizzly. Neither of the wounded bears was found.
The human population in bear strongholds in south-west Montana has escalated by up to a third during the past decade, and has led to grizzly bears getting into increasing conflicts with humans.
FWP put out a news release last week warning visitors that staff had confirmed grizzly bear sightings throughout the state, “particularly in areas between the Northern Continental Divide and the Great Yellowstone ecosystems”.
If nothing else, Sheehy may have been drawing attention to September’s bear aware month, established by a proclamation issued by Governor Greg Gianforte to encourage safe recreation in bear country.
