In 1976, University of Montana student Rick Mace walked into his adviser’s office to inquire about classes he needed for his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology.

He left the office with a summer job researching Northwest Montana’s newly protected grizzly bears. That was the beginning of a nearly 40-year career for Mace as one of the region’s top grizzly experts.

Now, with the Crown of the Continent area home to a robust, growing grizzly population and removal of the bears’ Endangered Species Act listing in sight, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife biologist is bidding adieu to a lifetime spent working to understand the great bear.

“It’s been a real good gig,” Mace said, “I’ve been doing this since I was 21 years old, from when it was basically impossible to find a grizzly bear ... I was in school the day it was listed, at the first meetings where we were trying to figure out what to do with this species.”

Born and raised in Iowa, Mace said that before that day he had no particular interest in grizzlies, merely wanting to study wildlife and knowing Montana was one of the top destinations to do so.

He spent a few years tracking bears in Alaska before landing a research biology job on the Rocky Mountain Front, gathering data for the fledging grizzly program for seven years. Then from 1987 through 1997, he worked on another long-term study in the South Fork that targeted bears near Hungry Horse Reservoir.

From those pioneering studies arose the now well-known connection between grizzly habitat and road closures, eliciting loud cries from loggers and recreation enthusiasts, but ultimately helping establish the conditions for grizzlies to thrive in what is now called the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

That area includes Glacier National Park, Flathead National Forest (including the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex) and the Rocky Mountain Front, along with portions of British Columbia, Southern Alberta and the Flathead and Blackfeet Indian reservations.

“At that time, the population trajectory was still declining, and we found there were impacts from forest roads on grizzlies,” Mace said. “There were no gates before the ’80s. That whole road closure program, at the time, was a really tough go.”

Since then, Mace’s main focus has been defining the species’ population trends.

While the U.S. Geological Survey directed a program analyzing DNA samples to determine the ecosystem’s grizzly population, Mace and his team of roughly a dozen scientists have focused on mortality and reproduction levels year to year, using bear collars and radio telemetry to understand where the population is headed.

“I enjoy putting all the numbers together to find out what makes the population trend tick; reproduction numbers, mortality numbers, and putting them all together into one package, where population and habitat managers can use the information,” Mace said. “Up to now, we’ve used the two-pronged approach. Both were working in tandem, but the USGS has concluded the DNA program, and telemetry was chosen by the interagency group to continue.”

Over the years, advances in technology have helped his work along. With satellite tracking, biologists get weekly updates on the bears’ movements, allowing researchers to spend less time and money flying planes over the 8 million-square mile study area than was required in the past.

“Now when a bear moves from Hungry Horse Reservoir to Idaho, we know within a week,” Mace said, adding that years ago, the expensive collars could be lost if a bear moved too far out of range.

Most recently, Mace’s team has made significant breakthroughs in “density dependence,” the trend in which bears have begun regulating their own numbers as the ecosystem becomes more crowded. Biologists documented instances where adult males have attacked other males’ cubs to pre-empt the competition.

“We knew that stuff was happening, but to be able to really see it, you needed a long data stream,” he said.

Mace isn’t leaving quietly.

The gears are now in motion to remove grizzly bears from the “threatened” species list, and five national forests in Western Montana are in the process of adopting a far-reaching grizzly conservation strategy in anticipation of that delisting.

For his part, Mace and his team have been compiling decades of data, analysis and institutional knowledge in the form of a comprehensive management report, the draft version of which is due out by the end of this month.

Included in the report will be the current distribution of bears in the ecosystem, how they have expanded beyond their range at the time of listing, mortality summaries, survival and reproduction rates, current and past population trends and a discussion of what sustainable mortality levels must be should the state reopen grizzly bear hunting.

After review by scientists with several agencies involved in the ecosystem committee, the report will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

While noting that some people are opposed to the possible delisting, Mace believes it’s time.

“The point is, we have approximately 1,000 grizzly bears this year in the NCDE, and it’s growing two to three percent annually. So it’s recovered well beyond what it was when they were listed. The distribution is well beyond the federal recovery areas.”

He added that the main impetus for the original listing was the lack of information on grizzly bear numbers and trends.

At the time, biologists estimated between 200 and 300 grizzlies remained in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Now the population is stable enough that reopening a hunting season for the bears has entered into the delisting conversation. The bears were federally designated as threatened for more than 15 years before the state banned hunting of the bears.

“The question now is, what population level do we want here?” Mace asked. “Right now we have six bear management specialists in the state managing bear conflicts. One of the things society has to determine is, we can have more bears, but we’re going to need more people managing them. It’s a social issue, it’s a personal ethics issue and it’s a political issue. I think that’s going to be the thing to watch in the next couple of years.”

Mace’s absence will be a notable one at the meetings of the interagency grizzly committee for the Northern Continental Divide.

At the committee’s most recent meeting last month, Mace was presented with a plaque honoring his decades of dedicated service. He’s retiring at the same time as his wife, Gael Bissell, who works in the same office and has over the past 30 years secured more than $120 million in funding for local habitat conservation.

They plan to stay in the valley but will first spend time traveling and looking for a possible winter home in the Southwest.

And while the state wildlife agency is enduring layoffs and unfilled vacancies due to budget cuts, Mace said his position will be advertised once he leaves at the end of the month. The new hire will have big shoes to fill considering Mace’s decades of institutional knowledge on grizzly biology and policy.

What advice would he give to his replacement?

“Stick to the science, stick to the grizzly facts and don’t be swayed by politics. I learned a long time ago it’s complicated trying to be an advocate and a scientist at the same time, whether you’re working on cancer research or grizzly bear protections,” Mace said.

“I went into wildlife biology because I like animals, but I didn’t go into it to ‘save’ animals. And I’m not working to ‘save’ grizzlies, I’m working to get the most complete information on grizzlies so people can make informed decisions.”

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.