Missoula County Commissioners Vero, Slotnick and Strohmaier were present at the meeting.
Commissioner Dave Strohmaier moved the adoption of the resolution. Commissioner Josh Slotnick seconded the motion.
The motion was approved unanimously by the County Commissioners.
Mayor Jordan Hess We do have one committee report, and this is a joint committee report of the City Council and an action of the Board of County Commissioners. I'll turn it over to Commissioner Juanita Vero to call the county meeting to order, if necessary. Commissioner Vero are you in attendance? Oh, oh, thank you. Commissioner, you should be able to join us now.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Hi Mayor. Can you hear me? My mic was disabled. Is it, is it working?
Mayor Jordan Hess Yes, we can hear you know.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Okay, fantastic. Thank you. And yes, we’re, we’re present and we're, we're here to, to listen to this proclamation…
Mayor Jordan Hess Great.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Or resolution rather….
Mayor Jordan Hess Okay so, yeah….
Commissioner Juanita Vero I believe, actually yes and I, I believe commissioner Dave Strohmaier is in person….
Mayor Jordan Hess He, he’s sitting to my left and
Commissioner Juanita Vero Okay…..
Mayor Jordan Hess And Commission Slotnick is, is on the line virtually as well. So, without objection, we’ll it over to Ginny Miriam for our staff report. Ms. Miriam.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Thank you.
Ginny Miriam It’s a lot more complicated than it used to be, right? Good evening City Council and special thanks to the County Commissioners for joining us tonight. We are here to bring you a joint City-County Resolution providing for a Bear Smart Policy in the greater Missoula area. It directs staff to implement best practices and policies to protect residents and bears in the interest of both public safety and the preservation of bears in the Missoula Valley as wildlife living and natural conditions. We have tonight, members of the Missoula Bear Smart Working Group. The working group has its roots in the local government resident partnership that has worked on wildlife issues including the city's wildlife feeding ordinance and the establishment of the bear buffer zone for the past approximately 15 years. The group reconvened this past winter following a season of exceptional bear human conflicts in our valley. This summer and fall those conflicts have continued to escalate and we've all seen news media coverage of bears in our community. The working group presented our intent to work toward a Bear Smart Community Program for Missoula to the Missoula County Board of Commissioners, the Missoula Mayor, and several City Council Representatives on February 8th of this year. Since then, we have developed and published a Missoula Area Hazard Assessment and a Management Plan, which will serve as guide documents as we work toward becoming a fully Bear Smart community. The Bear Smart Community Program was developed in British Columbia. It is a voluntary preventive conservation measure that encourages communities, businesses, and individuals to work together. Its goal is to address the root causes of human bear conflicts, reducing the risk to human safety and private property, as well as the number of bears that must be killed or relocated each year and it has been adopted around many communities in the west including Durango, Colorado, is I think the one that we hear most about but some other cities in Montana as well such as Whitefish most recently. Tonight, you will hear from two seasoned bear scientists who are members of the working group, Jamie Jonkle who is the man on the ground for bears as the bear manager for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Region 2 and Chris Servheen who is the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service for many years and works on wildlife conservation worldwide and is President and Board Chair of the Montana Wildlife Federation here to talk to you a bit about the reasoning behind becoming a Bear Smart Community, what we found in the hazard assessment. Thank you.
Chris Servheen Good morning or good afternoon, I guess. I’m waiting for my IT person here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about this this bear issue and the Bear Smart Missoula program. You know, we've been working on this since February as the bear Missoula Bear Smart work group and we've come a long way and there's a good reason for this because we, we have between 150 and 200 bears in the Missoula Valley right now. They're all black bears right now but there may be grizzly bears here that we don't know about. So, this picture is from the University campus and that garbage can right there next to that that bear, behind that bear, is the reason the bear is on the university campus. Missoula has bears and we're having more bears all the time. This, this situation is aggravated by the fact that we're having more and more people moving into Missoula and many of these people don't know much about living with bears at all or living with wildlife in general. As Ginny said, we have completed the Bear Hazard Assessment. The hazard assessment identifies what the problems are in the Missoula area related to bears and where those problems exist, and that document is available on missoulabbears.org and I think all of you have access to a copy of that. The study area that we used was similar to the zoning area and the recent zoning change, so it includes the center of Missoula, as well as areas in Missoula County surrounding Missoula because we can't really segregate the areas where bears are, and people are. They all overlap, so this was the, the study area we picked in all the areas you can see identified there are areas of fair human conflicts. This identifies the reason that bears get into conflicts with people, 49% of the conflicts are due to garbage and access of bears into human garbage. That usually occurs because the garbage is improperly stored and is available to bears. Fruit trees are another big deal. Right now a big time for fruit trees, as all the fruit ripens, and bears move into those places. Bird feeders are a serious problem, particularly in the summertime when people choose to feed birds seed. Seed is not necessary to be fed to bird and birds in the summertime; there's plenty of natural foods but by feeding birds seeds in the summertime, people are killing bears. This is a direct source of bear mortality. Hummingbirds are something else that is fed. As a bird feeder, you can feed hummingbirds in the summer, and we recommend in the in the management plan that the feeders be hung 10 feet high and at least four feet from buildings or trees. That way, the bears can't get at them, the hummingbirds can, and you won't have a problem. Other issues, human food in freezers, they're left maybe in garages that don't work after a while, livestock and pet feed, particularly pet food that is left on the porch or in the carport or the, the driveway. That is a serious problem, people should not feed their pets at night and leave the food out and those you could see the various types of conflicts but the majority of those are things that we can solve. This is the, the probability of interaction map that shows the risks of getting into conflict with bears and as you see, as you move into the center of Missoula, the conflicts are really low where we are right now but on the periphery, particularly in in places like Rattlesnake Creek, East Missoula, Grant Creek, Pattee Canyon, Blue Mountain, O'Brien Creek, Big Flat, all of these are places where bears and humans overlap and conflicts have been ongoing. We have a lot of situations right now where garbage cans that are really available to bears are in bear habitat. This is in Pattee Canyon. I took this picture earlier this year and anybody that goes up Pattee Canyon passes those blue garbage carts. They're easily available to bears, you just knock them over, and the bears get into them. On the right is a picture of some garbage going up the hill where the bears get out a bag of trash and haul it up the hill and eat it. The next document, we finished just recently, is the Conflict Management Plan and that documents details how to fix each one of these problems as a series of, of ideas and methods and efforts that can be put in place by the city and county government to, to reduce these conflicts that that are identified that you saw in that pie chart. So, it's possible to solve this problem. That Conflict Management Plan is to guide you, City and County officials toward effective strategies to minimize bear human conflicts. It has all the resources in it that you would need to make good decisions and it's based on the best management practices that we can come up with for people to live in bear habitat. I want to emphasize that this is a serious problem in the Missoula area. There are lots of bears overlapping with lots of people. This is causing property damage, garbage strewn across neighborhoods. I'm sure everybody here has seen that and increased risk of human injury. This is a safety problem having these bears coming and looking for garbage around people is a human safety problem. The high cost to Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Manager, Jamie Jonkle is the lead bear manager here for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. Fish, Wildlife, and Parks spends about $50,000.00 a year just in the Missoula area with all these bear conflicts. The Missoula Valley is a death trap for bears because a lot of these bears get into conflicts, and they have to be killed. And this is a poorer image for Missoula as a community that's uncaring about wildlife and proper sanitation and wildlife habitat. And there are increasing demands for, for public from the public for Action to do something about this and, and we think that the Bear Conflict Management Plan has all the solutions that are out there that can really reduce these problems quite effectively. Garbage, as I said, is a number one issue in terms of conflicts, 49% of the conflicts are due to garbage. You know, bear resistant carts are now available from both Republic Services and Grizzly Disposal. From Republic Services, these carts you can see a picture of one there that's a 96 gallon cart. I think it costs about a dollar a week more for a household. I have one of those as opposed to one of those blue carts. So, it's not a lot of money but it it's a cart that the bears cannot get into. And these are some other examples of bear resistant containers, those two brown ones you see on your right were put in by the Forest Service at the trailheads at Pattee Canyon to keep the bears out of garbage there, very effective mechanism and there are good ways to prevent bears from getting into garbage. So, I recommend a bear buffer zone, which is the gray area on this map and in that buffer zone the, the advanced management practices of, of secure garbage cans, no bird feeding, hanging hummingbird feeders, picking fruit trees, all that kind of thing should be in that gray area. In the core of Missoula, which is the lighter colored area, it’s probably not necessary to do that right now. And most importantly, we have grizzly bears in and around Missoula right now. We've had grizzly bears in the Rattlesnake this spring. Two grizzly bears were just caught down by Lolo. They went across through west, east Missoula, across the interstate, probably up Deer Creek and over and they ended up by Florence, and then up by Lolo, and they've been captured and relocated. They were eating apples in the Bitterroot Valley. These were two-year-old bears that were just out on their own, trying to make a living. They're acting like teenagers, they don't know how to get by and if we provide stuff for them, they will get into it and get into trouble. So thank you for recognizing the importance of making Missoula a Bear Smart Community. We think this is an important thing to do and it's the right thing to do. We live in bear habitat. They don't live in our habitat; we live in theirs, so let's try to get along together by making some effort. So Jamie is here to answer questions in detail, and I thank you for your time.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Let’s go right to questions. Anyone have, anyone have questions? Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Vasecka Yeah thank you. With the creation of this resolution, I'm a little bit concerned about the ordinances that will be involved and there's no ordinances yet and they will come through Council and the Commissioners, as they are made. Is that correct or are we voting on certain ordinances now?
Ginny Miriam That’s correct.
Alderperson Vasecka Okay thank you. And then I was also wondering if someone could speak to, if they do encounter a bear getting into their trash, what? Just for community knowledge, what they should do or not do?
Jamie Jonkle Mayor, Commissioners, Council members, thank you for having me. Jamie Jonkle with Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. This year, our bears are in a kind of an extreme situation because of lack of natural foods and they're going through what's called hyperphagia. It's where all they do is think about food and this year, we're seeing extreme hyperphagia. I had a call the other day, a fellow was just doing some woodwork and had a couple sawhorses and it was under apple tree and there were apples all around him and the way he keyed into the bear was he felt something between his legs and he looked down and the bear was trying to eat an apple between his legs, and you know he like immediately freaked out and tried to move the bear off. You know, banging hammers and boards together. All the bear could think about was the apples. So, a lot of the bears that we're seeing this year are just totally in that element of eating and getting the food that's in front of you. You know, if they're on a patch of clover and you're banging pots and pans and screaming at it, most of them are just ignoring you so they can eat the clover or dandelions on your heavily watered lawn. So, it's extreme behavior that we're seeing this year, it's, it's not the norm, but in the fall, bears always go into that same mode, but it can be dangerous especially people stumble onto a bear in a backyard, or a child goes out to empty the garbage and there's a female with cubs. And as you'll see in the assessment, there's just a lot of attractants here in Missoula that are no-brainers, that we could fix. Sadly, our Wildlife here in the west are going through kind of a just generally across the west, they're, they're coming down into our urban settings more and more. You see the same issues going on in Florida, the west coast, the east coast, Montana, even up in Canada where we just have a lot more urban wildlife. So, it's probably going to get more and more interesting, as time goes by, and we'll probably be seeing a lot more black bears and a lot more grizzlies here in the valley.
Alderperson Vasecka So, if you do encounter a bear getting into your garbage, just stay away?
Jamie Jonkle Well, you know be wary. You know, just like if you're walking in Greenough Park, you should be carrying bear spray. You know, if you live in the Rattlesnake residential area and walking your kids to school, you should be carrying bear spray. That’s how many bears there are just in the Rattlesnake. I’m estimating right now, 40-50 bears, just in the Rattlesnake drainage. So, govern yourselves accordingly and always be thinking about bears, especially this time of year.
Alderperson Vasecka Thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Ms. Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Okay, I'm going to digest that for a second. Thank you for that. I, my question I guess, is for Jamie or whoever from a standpoint of the other communities that have adopted these sort of ordinances and brought awareness to the community, have they been able to basically have success in sort of the interface between humans and bears which hopefully would lead to less bears needing to be euthanized or moved?
Chris Servheen The answer to that is yes. Securing attractants does reduce the number of conflicts. It reduces the number of bears because there's not a lot of stuff to eat then they don't come into town as much or if they come through they just travel on through. You know, we have some natural foods here where bears are eating shrub fruits say along the creek bottoms, they would be doing that whether we were here or not, but they stay a much longer time period and they become what we call food conditioned when they get things like garbage and apples and birdseed and things like that and then they start just living with us and that's not what we want. We want to be separated and under natural conditions, they might come and go and be here sometimes, but by securing the attractants, we will be able to reduce the number of times that bears are seen and the numbers of bears that are around. We'll never be a bear free community because we live in bear habitat, but we can reduce the number of conflicts and the potential for, as Jamie said, the guy is standing there and all of a sudden there's a bear eating apples around there. So, there are ways to do things better and, and we can do that with this program.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Jones Sure, I think, oh I'm sorry looks like…..
Jamie Jonkle If it’s okay, I'll just add one thing. You know sadly whenever you know new things come around there are people that don't want to change, but they're also bears that will not want to change. We do have quite a few professional, urban, garbage seeking bears, and sadly you know some of those bears are not going to want to change their behavior and we may see elevated attempts to get at garbage. You know, like this year, we've had a lot more break-ins into garages and homes in the Rattlesnake because in the Rattlesnake people are really trying and so are some of the bears, and so sadly, over time, we will have to target some of these individual bears and most likely remove them but once that memory is out of the population by doing all these good things that we recommend that behavior will never develop in the first place.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks for that. Ms. Jones.
Alderperson Jones Sure, I’m just kind of quickly for either Chris or Jamie and I think you basically said this, but I think it maybe deserves to be bluntly emphasized. And that is that it sounds like we've got more people moving in, our population is growing, many people from out of this area who've never lived with wildlife before and we've also got a changing climate and this year has been very, very bad, but it seems like it's been building over the last several decades and if we don't make the changes, it will get worse and worse and worse. It's so important to start steering the ship in a new direction now, I mean is that, would you agree with?
Jamie Jonkle Yes, good stewardship practices will that are ingrained in in Montanans will greatly assist with the issues involving bears. There's lots of really, really good programs out there too, so we have a lot of tools in the basket already that we can bring to town. A best example are folks that want to come out west, you know live a simpler life, raise chickens, have a garden, have some goats, they learn pretty quickly that bears like goats and like chickens like apples, but we've got some really good programs through all sorts of NGO groups to get free electric fence and then we actually have a great support group to help the public you know solve issues that they're having with wildlife. So….
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks. Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Yeah thanks and thanks for the presentation and we saw this last week as well, so I appreciate you coming twice. I, I just wanted to make a note that you don't have to wait for us to pass the resolutions to get like the trash cans and start doing this. So, Chad Bauer was here on Wednesday and my understanding from Republic Services and my understanding is that you have plenty of these trash cans available, so if you're in any of these high, high bear conflict areas do it before we ….. [many individuals talking]
Mayor Jordan Hess Chad’s got bins out front ready for you to take home….
Chad Bauer I was hiding in the back Amber. Good afternoon, Chad Bauer with Republic Services and yes, to answer your question, we do have plenty of bear resistant containers. Jamie has kept us very busy this fall. We are building lids for bear proof commercial dumpsters as fast as we can get them done, but we have plenty of the 96 gallon carts to put out for the public, if they need them.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you Mr. Bauer. Ms. Jordan.
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Can I make a comment?
Mayor Jordan Hess Let’s hold off on comments for just a moment. More questions? Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Yes, yeah I appreciate the Bear Smart Working Group bringing forward this resolution and I was curious if you are hoping that the city and county government will follow the management plan or are you planning on coming back with more specific recommendations for city ordinances or for budget requests or for staff positions?
Chris Servheen Well we can, we are still here and we're still available to help you. There, I think there's sufficient details in the management plan to get started, all the details of what needs to be done for all those major issues in best management practices to treat each one of them are in the management plan. If you need us to help you out in terms of suggesting new ideas or new plans or maybe budget needs or things that maybe could be done, we're here and available to help you, we're not disbanding. So, we're a bunch of, of citizens of Missoula and we're here to help and we'd like to see this through so anything you need from us we're happy to help out so…..
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Additional questions? Okay seeing none and Commissioners feel free to raise your hand and weigh in at any time as well. What we'll do on the Council side is I'll take a motion from Ms. Anderson as this was in the committee she chairs and then we will go to public comment and then come back for Council discussion. Ms. Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Okay thanks. I'm, we had moved it around so I'm…. found it. Okay, here we go. I moved to adopt a resolution providing for a bear smart policy and directing staff to implement best practices and policies to protect residents and bears in the interest of public safety and preservation of bears in the Missoula Valley as wildlife living in natural conditions.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. That motion is in order. Commissioners do you need anything at this time, or do you want to do you want to hold off? Commissioner Vero…
Commissioner Juanita Vero I defer to yeah….. Nope we've been briefed on this. I think we feel pretty good about supporting this but continue on.
Mayor Jordan Hess Okay great. So, we can go to public comment now. Okay.
Dave Strohmaier Yeah, Juanita, this is Dave, I would move that the Board of County Commissioners adopt the resolution.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Thank you Commissioner Strohmaier. I’m forgetting about process. Okay, so it’s been moved and seconded. [talking in the background] All in favor…okay. Aye.
[unknown/unannounced speaker] I think we're going to wait and take public comment Juanita.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Oh, we're just gonna push this through? Okay thank you…. Apologies.
[unknown/unannounced speaker] We are efficient across the street.
Mayor Jordan Hess I will go ahead and go to public comments. I've got an online public comment first from Brett Haverstick and you should be a little unmute now. Mr. Haverstick, you should be able to unmute…. Anyone in the room while we while we wait? Come on up.
Nancy Heil Hello Commissioners, Council members. My name is Nancy Heil I'm here on behalf of the Rattlesnake Creek Watershed Group speaking in support of your adoption of this resolution. As been noted, we have a lot more bears moving through the valley in this bad berry and natural food year and more people moving into the area who really aren't bear aware. We deeply support bears staying wild and humans staying safe as part of our living in this place in this watershed, and addressing this is going to take all of us working together as community. We believe that local government engagement and support are essential to an integrated community approach, and we really appreciate the city and the county working together on this. The Bear Smart Resolution sets the stage for additional work, and we urge your adoption of it. Thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you.
Brandi Atanasoff Hi, I’m Brandi Atanasoff, Ward 5. I want to ask you the history and the Flathead is that taking into account when developing your education for disposing trash? And when you are doing the education about proper disposal with these trash bins, are you including what happened back what was in the 60’s with The Night of the Grizzly what happens when you do not properly dispose of that? And how it could create a big mess and that these things keep the reasons behind them in, in your in what you developed.
Mayor Jordan Hess So we….
Brandi Atanasoff Okay, so just to, just to recap….. We have history within the state where it wasn't properly, trash was not properly disposed of, and we haven't had as heavy of a bear group in quite some time and so I just wanted to read…. I wanted to make sure with them that they are including Flathead’s history somewhere in this at some point, so that we have what happens if we don't properly dispose of those things. So, I'm sure that you have all heard of The Night of the Grizzly and can do this on their own. I just wanted to just double check that. Thank you for your time.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you.
Radley Watkins Thank you. Hi, I'm Radley Watkins. I'm here tonight as a citizen of Missoula, the City of Missoula. I live in the Dean Stone area. One of the great things about living there is the city has done such a good job protecting open space and all my neighbors like to hike on the great trails and parks and there's been signs by neighbors saying careful bear scat seen in the area and be careful about hiking at night. That being said, you know trash pickup on my street on Parkview Way was today, last night the whole street had their trash cans out ahead of time. And I really just think you know this resolution will set the way for people to get the message that things need to be done differently and we really need an education campaign from the city and the county on not, not so where you can necessarily protect the bears in our community but so that we can keep these bears from being conditioned to our food sources. So, thank you for hearing this and I encourage you to support it. Thanks.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you.
Beth Judy I’m Beth Judy and I'm speaking at us as a citizen of Missoula. I live in the lower Rattlesnake. I started working on the problem of human humans attracting bears probably around 2007 and at first, I was doing it for the bear's sake, but as I went door to door and listened to stories I quickly changed to doing it for the safety of both people and bears. Everyone I met if they'd lived in the Rattlesnake for at least two years had a story of some kind of encounter with bears. At my house, I've had about six in 25 years, including a bear put down in my yard and I live right next to the highway. Trying to get people to change their behavior and beliefs has always been super hard. There's always been a little success along the way but mostly failure. In the Rattlesnake, it's an overwhelming problem and now there are way more bears, way more people, and climate change is and will be affecting natural bear foods. The Missoula Bear Smart approach gives me more hope than I've ever had, that we can get somewhere with the problem, especially over time. The reason for my hope is that the Bear Smart approach is comprehensive. Key stakeholders have come together and are focusing on this problem together. Becoming bear smart will still be daunting and hard but now I believe it's possible, especially if we do some smart marketing and outreach along with the rest of the work. I earnestly urge you to adopt the Bear Smart Resolution so we can begin the journey to becoming a bear smart community. Thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you.
Elissa Chott My name is Elissa Chott and I'm the Programs Manager for the Great Bear Foundations Missoula office. Coexistence with wildlife is never easy. As human development spreads out in our valleys and upper drainages, pressure is put on species that have already had a hard time scrapping out a living in the beautiful mountains we are fortunate enough to call home. We have seen an increase in bear conflicts in recent years and a sharp increase this year, as wild bear foods had poor crops. Bears are in town seeking much needed calories, becoming food conditioned, as they have ready access to human-based food sources. The occasional bear passing through residential areas wouldn't be a huge deal, but they do not simply pass through. Bears stay because they find food. The human attractant is easily accessible to bears are then ingrained in the cub’s behaviors, as mother bears pass down where to find food to their offspring. These bears will return to town as adults and the cycle will continue as long as human-based food sources are easily accessible. It is up to us to make sure we properly store our garbage, our bird seed, our domestic fruit and other attractants. This becomes a human safety issue as bears are in backyards and alleys and garages left wide open seeking these foods we leave out for them. We are asking the City and Council to help instill best management practices when living with bears beginning with bears access to garbage, which is the number one conflict source. If we can do this, we can keep both bears and people safe using the examples and methods set forth in other bear smart communities. It is going to take time, effort, outreach, and collaboration, but in moving to be bear smart, we are creating a stronger future for our community and the wildlife with which we share these mountains. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Anyone else tonight? Com on up.
Melody Cunningham I thought I was only commenting on one thing tonight. I do want to just give a shout out to Jamie Jonkle and his team. I'm sure he doesn't know me but I'm the lady up on Saddleback Lane who's called a few times and folks have, they've come out, I've gotten advice about electric fences, advice about a lot of things, and they're incredibly kind and responsive and don't you make you feel dumb that you don't know how to put an electric fence together at first pass. So, I just wanted to give a shout out and thank you and I totally support Bear Smart.
Mayor Jordan Hess And can you give us your name again, for the record?
Melody Cunningham Melody Cunningham.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Any additional public comment tonight?
Blake Nicolazzo Hi, I’m Blake Nicolazzo. I started a group called Missoula for Bears and we brought the film Bears of Durango to town to play at Zach and some of you came to that and there's a lot of us who have been working on this issue for a long time. I want to thank those of you on Council who have really participated with us and made this happen in the working group really deserves a lot of our accolades. I want to make the point that this is an incredible step forward, it's time, and I'm really grateful that this issue has gotten the attention it deserves, but with this comes a responsibility for education and enforcement. Without that, I feel like we're gonna just be right back where we started. So, I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but I want to be very realistic that this is the beginning; it's an important beginning. I'm really glad we're taking it, but education and enforcement are required to get this done. So, thank you so much.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go back to our online attendees. Brett Haverstick are you able to unmute? We do have a new phone number in attendance as well. Ms. Rehbein could you read the phone, the phone number again for anyone who wants to dial in by phone?
Marty Rehbein I would be happy to, just a moment. Our phone number is 406-384-6960, that's 406-384-6960 and the conference ID number: 387736445 and the # sign. That again is 387763445 and the # sign.
Mayor Jordan Hess Great, thank you. I’ll just wait, for just a moment…..Anyone else in the audience? Okay. Oh yeah, you can, you can come on up.
James Ruth Hi, my names is James Ruth. I live in the Orchard Homes area. I didn't come to Missoula in the mid-90’s for the nightlife, I came for the wilderness, and I came because Montana was the only place in the lower 48 that really had real Wilderness left. And I want to commend the work of Jamie Jonkle and Chris Servheen, and people with the Great Bear Foundation because I've, I knew Chuck Jonkle. He was one of the first people I met in Missoula, and I think we have a special challenge and a great opportunity to be a model for how people in this country deal with wildlife and we are in bear habitat, and I just wanted to say I support this fully.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you, appreciate the comments. Anyone else tonight? Okay, we will go back to Council comment. I have Ms. Jordan first.
Alderperson Kristen Jordan Thank you. I just wanted to say I think this is such an amazing effort and I'm really grateful for the scientific approach that the, the team has, has taken in this and gathering data and working, collaborating with homeowners and residents of Missoula, and using science to come up with some really simple solutions to make sure that bears and people are safe. This is something that I wanted to address before I even got on to Council and then I found out the ball was already rolling, so I'm super grateful to the work that you all have done on this and I'm fully in support of this resolution and fully in support of seeing the, the bear buffer zone expanded, as you guys have recommended in your in your hazard plan. So, thank you very much.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Yeah, thanks. I really just want to echo Ms. Jordan's comments. I really appreciate the collaboration of this group and I think that by bringing partners together, it's going to be a more comprehensive effort. I'm also, so I'm, I'm fully in support of this. I will look forward to some, the resolutions that Ms. Vasecka spoke of coming forward and then of course we always have to talk about enforcement, we'll get there.
Mayor Jordan Hess I just learned of a potential trick for our online attendee, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to this one more one more time. Brett Haverstick, you may be able to unmute now.
[unknown speaker] He’s on mute.
Mayor Jordan Hess Yeah and I think, I think that's not an issue on our end. So, we'll, we'll move back to Council, back to Council comment. Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Yeah, I just want to say in Missoula we're so lucky to be the home of the grizzlies and I think to have that title in the future, we need to make sure that we completely follow this Conflict Management Plan and do everything that we can to protect the bears and protect the residents of Missoula. And most of all, we're going to need to stop the climate crisis and ensure that bear foods will still be plentiful in the future and to ensure that all the bear species will stay alive and healthy for generations to come.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Thanks so much. I’m happy to support this and I really appreciate just the little bit of education that just myself has been able to glean from this whole process. I grew up in the Flathead and I've had bears at my grandparent’s cabin for my entire life and I have stories of them breaking into our house and getting into our freezer and they really like Oreos apparently even if you keep them in the freezer. And the whole, you know, just knowing that we don't need to feed birds in the summertime, I didn't know that and I have you know considered myself a pretty bear aware person and the fact that I mean it just it's as simple as getting educated to the small things that we can be doing before we have to go down the road of any you know ordinances or mandates or compliance. You know, it's just the responsible thing to do. We all love to live here, the beauty, the nature, but with that comes responsibility and the simple responsibility that people can do is get educated. Don't apparently feed birds in the summertime and you have a bird bath they will still come to your yard I learned that too and the precautions that you can take get a bear can, a bear resistant can and just do the right thing for not only the safety of your neighbors but for the safety of the wildlife that do contribute to you know the parts that make Missoula an amazing place to live. So, I'm excited for this, a continued conversation, education to come forward, and just appreciate just a small bit of education that I myself have received. So, thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you. Ms. Savage.
Alderperson Savage I just wanted to echo my colleagues here. I really appreciate all the work that went into this, and I love like the idea of a working group that has come together to do all of this. I think it's wonderful and it's been well communicated to us, and I really appreciate all of that. I'm one of the Ward 1 representatives, so it is not lost on me that giant red stripe that we also call the Rattlesnake on your map, and I don't know about you Heidi, but I get like bear poop pictures emailed to me quite a bit in the driveway, at the bus stop, in the middle of the road. So, I'm really happy to support this tonight and I'll be carrying my bear spray through Greenough Park. I did not know that, so thank you for that one.
Mayor Jordan Hess Ms. Becerra.
Alderperson Becerra Thank you. I just want to express my gratitude to all the experts and all the businesses and organizations that have collaborated. Thank you Ginny for keeping everyone together, moving forward on this. I do live in an area that's pretty regularly frequented by bears, so, I, I very much appreciate this, and I, I will be getting one of those trash cans. I just want to say that resolutions are not the solution but it's what sets us up to hold ourselves accountable. It’s, it's how we as a community can hold ourselves accountable to do more, to take the next step, and to think about ways in which we can provide incentives and also enforcement in in our community for, for this very important issue. So, just fully supportive of it and very grateful for all the expertise that we have had throughout this process.
Mayor Jordan Hess Commissioner Strohmaier.
Dave Strohmaier Thanks Mayor Hess. So, 17 years ago, I sat at this table as a new County Commissioner representing Ward 1, actually Jennifer, I was in the line of succession of your seat, going in the opposite direction and at that point in time, we were grappling with issues related to bears as we are today and that early work back in the mid-2000’s eventuated into the bear buffer zone that you currently see up here on the map. Well, 2 weeks ago, walking down Pine Street, I ran into a humongous pile of bear poop full of apples right by the is either Knights of Columbus building or in the between there in the Federal Building, maybe the bear was doing due diligence in the Federal Building I don't know but anyway a week later, a week ago, and I just lived down the street here on East Pine Street all of the trash cans in the alley between Pine and Spruce were hit by a bear or bears. And so, what we continue to deal with is some level, particularly in the urban core here of ignorance about the fact that we have bears, we live in bear country, and we have bears in our midst right downtown. So, I see this resolution and the good work that Chris and Jamie and, and Ginny, and many others have done in pulling this resolution together to pull the working group together as a real evolution in our thinking as a community about living with bears. So, I'm delighted to see this before us tonight and to take the next concrete steps to actually make change, not only here in Missoula and I'll remind folks Missoula is in Missoula, County but outside of the city limits in Missoula County also.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thanks Commissioner. Anyone else tonight? Okay, seeing none, we've had a staff presentation and Council comments and questions and public comment, and we can have a real call vote on the motion. Ms. Rehbein.
Mayor Jordan Hess And the motion passes. And I’ll turn it over to the Commissioners. Commissioner Vero.
Commissioner Juanita Vero Is there a motion?
[unknown/unannounced speaker] I think we already did that Juanita.
Dave Strohmaier Okay, we’re, we’re moving forward. All in favor, aye.
[numerous unknown/unannounced speakers] Aye, aye….
Commissioner Juanita Vero Thank you all so much.
[unknown/unannounced speaker] Thank you.
Mayor Jordan Hess Thank you and thanks, thanks for joining us tonight Commissioners, we appreciate it. You're welcome to you're welcome to stay around as long as you'd like. Okay [laughs]. Okay, thank you all for the, the work on that that good piece of work and I look forward to partnering to implement this. It’s, it's a good piece of business.