Back to StoriesAs Feds Delay Decision on Grizzly Protections, Montana and Wyoming Threaten Lawsuits
August 8, 2024
As Feds Delay Decision on Grizzly Protections, Montana and Wyoming Threaten LawsuitsU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pushed decision timeline to January 2025. States want update by end of October.
Since 1975, grizzly bears have been protected under the endangered species act. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming continue efforts to delist, petitioning the federal government to transfer management to the states. Photo by Kimberly Shields/NPS
by Sophie
Tsairis
Federal wildlife officials are postponing
their decision about whether to remove grizzly bears from the Endangered
Species Act protections, prompting threats of lawsuits from Wyoming and Montana
claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is dragging its feet.
FWS was expected to rule on the matter by
July 2024. The decision has now been deferred to January 2025.
Last month, Montana issued a 60-day notice
of intent to sue the agency for not delivering a 12-month finding on its
petition regarding the delisting of the distinct population segment, or DPS, of
grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Wyoming has filed a
comparable lawsuit concerning the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem DPS.
In a July 26 legal filing, Matt Hogan, mountain-prairie
regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, announced the delay citing
a slew of grizzly-related lawsuits from Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, which
necessitated separate evaluations of the GYE and NCDE grizzly populations, in
addition to assessing the overall grizzly population in the Lower 48 states.
“To ensure consistency between these decisions,
the Service currently intends to finalize all three of these documents—the GYE
12-month finding, the NCDE 12-month finding, and the proposed rule revising or
removing the entire ESA listing of grizzly bears in the lower-48 states—simultaneously,”
Hogan stated in the announcement.
Govs. Mark Gordon of Wyoming and Greg
Gianforte of Montana have expressed frustration over the delay and have
threatened legal action if there is no update by the end of October. In the delay briefing, Hogan points to litigation in
the Save
the Yellowstone Grizzly v. FWS court case—in which the agency was named a
defendant—as a contributing factor to the postponement.
“[The interstate management plan] is not responsible management of an animal with such a slow reproduction rate.” – Kristin Combs, Executive Director, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates
Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have all
petitioned to end federal protections for grizzlies, arguing that the bear
population has successfully reached recovery goals. Should delisting occur, the
states have agreed on an interstate management plan
to maintain a population of between 800 and 950 grizzlies in the GYE, with
specific limits on the number that can be killed or removed.
Opponents, however, express concerns about
habitat connectivity and the adequacy of the monitoring area. “The management
agreement between the three states is challenging because the brunt of the GYE
population [of grizzlies] is in Wyoming, which gives that state a larger chunk
of responsibility when it comes to delisting,” Kristin Combs, executive
director for Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, told Mountain Journal.
Combs noted that there are currently no
clear corridors between DPSs that would allow natural genetic connectivity between
the populations.
“[The interstate management plan] is not responsible
management of an animal with such a slow reproduction rate,” she said. “The
current population numbers are a long time coming and took a lot of effort and
money over decades. That plan will set us right back to where we were before
they were listed.”
Grizzly bears have been listed as
threatened under the ESA since 1975. They have been delisted twice, in 2007 and
2017, but both decisions were overturned by district courts following challenges
from environmental groups.
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