GRIZZLY AND CUB: Since 1975 Montana grizzly bears have been listed as a threatened species by the U.S. government.
iStockPhoto Paul Tessier

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is a well-known critic of frivolous government spending otherwise known as pork: those pricey projects that legislators routinely—and surreptitiously—slip into appropriations packages to benefit their own districts and bring them coveted votes. But scientists charge that an important study of grizzly bear DNA has gotten caught in the crosshairs as the veteran Arizona lawmaker attempts to showcase his creds as a crusader against wasteful government spending.

It is unclear why McCain, who has taken a firm stand on some other environmental issues—he believes more needs to be done to curtail global warming—considers the research to be a waste of time and money, and his press office did not respond to repeated e-mails and phone calls for comment. Yet, he is apparently so "outraged" that he takes a dig at it in a campaign TV spot in which an announcer declares:

"233 million for a bridge to nowhere. Outrageous… Three million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Unbelievable… A million dollars for a Woodstock Museum—in a bill sponsored by Hillary Clinton. Predictable… Who has the guts to stand up to wasteful government spending? One man. John McCain."

Currently the front-runner for the GOP nod, McCain also hits the research in speeches on the stump, cracking jokes about bear paternity tests and criminal investigations. "I don't know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money," McCain railed last month during a campaign stop in Clawson, Mich. Scientists, however, are not amused: They insist that the study is not only worth every penny but that the $3-million price tag cited in the ad is, in a word, wrong.

In fact, Congress over the past five years has forked over a total of $4.8 million to study the genetic material of Montana's grizzly bears, according to Katherine Kendall, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Kendall heads the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project, which is aimed at obtaining the first accurate population estimate of grizzlies living in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem—eight million acres of land in northwestern Montana that encompasses Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

"This is not pork barrel at all," says Richard Mace, a research biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP). "We have a federal law called the Endangered Species Act and [under this law] the federal government is supposed to help identify and conserve threatened species."

The grizzly has been listed as a threatened species since 1975 and scientists say that it is essential to get a handle on the population to preserve it. But, according to Kendall, until the feds decided to invest in this grizzly bear DNA study, researchers lacked the funds to conduct research at the scale necessary to get a reliable measure.

In 2002 Kendall assembled a scientific panel with representatives from the USGS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and FWP, along with other scientific and environmental organizations to determine the best way to measure the remaining grizzly population of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. It recommended setting up barbed wire hair-snagging stations to painlessly pluck fur from passing bears that would be used for DNA fingerprinting, a technique employed to distinguish individuals of the same species by the differences in their genetic material. This is the only way to accurately estimate population in such heavily forested terrain, where bears are difficult to spot, says Chris Servheen, a grizzly expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In response, the USGS set aside $250,000 to launch the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project; the next year, Congress stepped in to provide additional funding, and from 2003 to 2007 appropriated $4.8 million to the effort, Kendall says.