A significant spike in grizzly bear mortalities last year has prompted bear managers from around the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem to gather in Bozeman next week to find solutions to the problem.

In a report released by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, researchers reported 48 known and probable grizzly mortalities, 37 of which could be attributed to human causes. Twenty of those human-caused mortalities, or 54 percent, were due to hunter conflicts.

The number is up slightly from an ecosystem count last fall in which wildlife managers reported 44 mortalities. At the time, the numbers passed both male and female mortality management limits.

If female mortalities exceed the 15 percent threshold for one more year, wildlife managers could decide to return the grizzly to federal Endangered Species Act protection. The mortalities come despite an estimated increase in the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population from 571 bears in 2007 to 596 bears last year.

Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said wildlife managers take the mortality spike seriously but that one year is not cause for panic.

“Indeed, we had a spike last year,” he said. “We had a high number of mortalities. We don’t like that. But we also know that the population continued to increase.

“One year alone is not going to change the population trajectory,” he said. “What we’re concerned about is if we have two consecutive years,” exceeding the female mortality threshold.

To solve the problem, wildlife managers from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have developed a series of recommendations to address the different types of mortalities that occurred in 2008. The process mirrors an effort that was launched after a similar mortality spike in 2004.

Servheen said the majority of those recommendations will address the hunter-related mortalities.

One recommendation “is to figure out how we can get hunters to use bear spray,” he said. “That’s a big thing because we think bear spray is very effective.”

Other suggestions are to address bow hunters, who Servheen said, because of the nature of their sport, often practice many of the behaviors considered dangerous in bear country. Wyoming recently changed hunting rules to allow bow hunters to also carry firearms.

“They sneak around, they’re really quiet, they sound like elk [with bugle calls] and they often do this alone,” he said.

Wildlife managers will also take a look at the 2004 plan to see which recommendations were implemented and, of those, which were effective in reducing bear deaths.

Louisa Willcox, senior wildlife advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said bear managers could start by allowing the public greater access to their data.

“The complete set of data on the dead bears could have been released in December, when the bears went into their dens,” she said. “We lost a lot of time unnecessarily by not having this data in circulation.”

Willcox said the number of bear mortalities last year rivals the days when Yellowstone National Park closed its dumps and large numbers of human-habituated and food-conditioned bears got into conflicts in and around the park.

“What happened last year is on a scale of what happened after the dumps closed,” she said. “Instead of saying, ‘We’ve got a problem, Houston,’ the agencies have played hide-the-ball.”

The Yellowstone Grizzly Coordinating Committee will meet starting at 1 p.m. April 15 in Bozeman at the Hilton Garden Inn located at 2023 Commerce Circle. The meeting continues at 8 a.m. April 16. The meeting is open to the public.