JACKSON HOLE, WY — Legendary conservationists Jane Goodall and Cynthia Moss don’t plan to use them, but they’ve entered a lottery in Wyoming for permits to hunt grizzly bear in the Yellowstone region. The state hasn’t allowed grizzly bear hunting in 44 years.

Grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem were removed from the Endangered Species List last year. In May, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission unanimously approved hunting of grizzly bears as trophy animals. The federal protection began in 1975 when the bruin population in the Yellowstone area plummeted to 136. Today, there are around 700 individuals.

Goodall, renowned for her research with chimpanzees, and Moss, who battles elephant poachers in eastern Africa, have joined a global protest of the controversial hunting season, which is scheduled to begin in weeks. The 22 permits that will be issued include a dozen for female grizzlies.

Goodall, 84, Moss, 78, and others, primarily women, joined the “Shoot ‘Em With A Camera, Not A Gun” campaign, which condemns Wyoming wildlife officials for approving a grizzly bear hunt only a year after the animals were removed from federal protection. It urges people to stalk grizzly with their cameras, not guns.

“People felt desperate, wanting to do something positive that could help keep these bears alive. I think we surprised ourselves at how much public support this has gotten in so little time,” Jackson Hole conservationist Lisa Robertson told National Geographic.

Ann Smith, one of those who placed an ad in a Jackson Hole newspaper promoting the idea of flooding wildlife officials with permit applications from non-hunters, expected a backlash in a state where big-game hunting adds about $300 million annually to the state economy. But the opposite happened, she told National Geographic.

“What stunned me is the number of positive calls I’ve received and 85 to 90 percent have come from women,” said Smith, who drives around Jackson Hole in a replica antique pickup truck that a huge stuffed teddy bear in it with a sign that reads “Grizzly Lives Matter.”

“No one has called me up on the phone and yelled at me,” she said. “I’ve received lots of affirmative horn honks and people giving me thumbs up.”

The application period for grizzly hunting licenses closed Monday.

A crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe has raised more than $34,000 of a $50,000 to offset the costs of going into the field with a camera.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

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