Feds ponder plans after grizzly delisting setback

Grizzly bear on kill in winter - Jim Peco, NPS
Grizzly bear on kill in winter – Jim Peco, NPS

Here’s an excellent write-up on the current status of removing grizzly bears from the Endangered Species List . . .

For the second time in a decade, the officials charged with getting grizzly bears off the Endangered Species List have to rethink their future after a major court setback.

A 2007 federal move to delist grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming failed when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife couldn’t show the bears could withstand the loss of traditional food sources like whitebark pine seeds and cutthroat trout.

The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) oversaw years of field work that concluded the bears could find alternate foods, and the federal government published a new delisting rule for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2017. Last September, another federal judge found it lacking and returned Yellowstone grizzlies to Endangered Species Act protection.

Read more . . .

Also read . . .
Montana wildlife officials move ahead on grizzly regs despite federal delisting stall (Missoulian)