In the compendium of false claims, an offering from Montana 2024 Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy 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 2,200,000 head in the state this year, according to department of agriculture estimates, down from 2,500,000 in 2021. The number of people is put at 1.12 million, according the US census bureau.
But Sheehy’s estimates for bear, grizzly and black, is wildly off, notwithstanding the fact that bears don’t respect state boundaries and aren’t easy to count – particularly outside of national parks.
Molly Parks, carnivore co-ordinator with Montana’s fish, wildlife and parks (FWP), says there aren’t good numbers for the bear population. A 2011 study put the number of black bear 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 has more than 2,100 grizzly bears.
“We definitely don’t have more bears than people in the state,” Parks told the Guardian....
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