Former FWS Grizzly Coordinator Updates Own 30-Year-Old Recovery Plan, Prompting Petition

Dr. Chris Servheen, leading bear biologist and the original author of the 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, submitted a December 9 report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service highlighting the ongoing struggles of grizzly bears despite 50 years of Endangered Species Act protections.

Servheen served as the FWS grizzly bear recovery coordinator from 1981 until his retirement in 2016. He currently co-chairs the North American Bears Expert Team for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

On the heels of the report, 15 national, regional and state environmental, tribal and animal welfare groups led by Earthjustice have petitioned FWS to update the current plan with Servheen’s recommended revisions. The agency is expected to announce its decision about whether to delist grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protections by January 20, the same day as the presidential inauguration. If grizzly bears are delisted, management of the species will fall to the states, something Montana has long sought but hasn’t experienced for nearly 50 years. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have agreed to a Tri-state Memorandum of Agreement to coordinate population management should the agency decide to delist grizzlies.  

In his 2024 report, Servheen listed reasons why grizzly bears have not recovered and why FWS should continue offering them protections. “Fragmented recovery areas leading to isolated populations, increasing mortality risk from regressive anti-predator policies, conflicts in connectivity areas, loss of habitat, increasing human development causing human-bear conflicts, and inadequate mortality and habitat regulatory protections continue to impede recovery efforts,” he wrote.

Servheen told Mountain Journal that many of the threats listed above are new or have evolved since he penned the Recovery Plan more than three decades ago and that his proposed updates incorporate new science and management practices addressing those threats and offering approaches that will lead to an achievable recovery for the species.

Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, said she doesn’t know what FWS will decide as it weighs the delisting of grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The agency will decide the fate of grizzlies in each of these subpopulations, or it can choose to delist all grizzlies in the Lower 48.

“Until conflicts are greatly reduced—including vehicle and train strikes, bears being killed because of front country [garbage] conflicts and livestock conflicts—bears are still in jeopardy of quickly losing numbers and ending up back where we started with recovery,” Combs said. “To lose 50 years of recovery in a few years because the states consider bears to be an inconvenience and nuisance would be a tragedy of the greatest level.”

In a media event following his updated report, Servheen offered solutions he says would help alleviate recovery efforts. “Grizzlies would be most secure as one large interconnected population, which is called a metapopulation, [that would] essentially connect all of those four ecosystems in the Northern Rockies into one unified population,” he said. “This would increase demographic resiliency so that the populations are stronger. It would increase genetic resiliency, so there wouldn’t be genetic problems from isolated populations, and it would provide climate change resiliency as habitats change with less snow and more fires.”

Servheen said other key updates in the revised plan include working toward coexistence between people and bears who live in the connectivity habitats and a commitment from states to stop killing wolves with traps and snares, which are also killing grizzlies.

His concern for the species extends past the January 20 deadline, knowing the incoming administration has the potential to cause irreversible damage to a 40-plus year recovery effort. He added that the risks for grizzlies are many, with the delisting decision looming and an incoming administration that has no interest in grizzly bears at all.

 “The [Trump] administration could cut the budget for any grizzly bear recovery, eliminate all FWS grizzly recovery staff, or support congressional delisting,” he said. “Once grizzlies are delisted, they will never be listed again, and anti-carnivore state politicians can do to grizzlies what they are currently doing to wolves.”

Over his extensive career studying grizzly bears, Servheen has consistently evaluated the conditions for delisting. While removing ESA protections could signal a conservation success, he contends current population levels and management plans fall short of ensuring the species' long-term survival.

“I didn’t want to be against something; I wanted to be for something,” he said. “The idea [of an updated report] was to put together a plan that would make real recovery achievable [for grizzly bears].”