The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing to return management of the threatened grizzly bear to the states.
The announcement came from the secretary of the interior and governors of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming via a windy livestream from Big Sky, Montana, on Tuesday afternoon.
“The endangered species list is not a dean’s list,” Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said. “It’s time that this bear graduates.”
Gordon, Idaho Gov. Brad Little and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte have long pushed for removing the bear from the Endangered Species Act list, which includes both threatened and endangered species. The proposal would keep the bears on that list but have states — not the federal government — manage them, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“ We’re moving responsibility back to the states, not delisting, but moving responsibility back to the states because of the great recovery,” Burgum said.
“The revised proposal supports the Trump administration’s goal of reducing unnecessary regulatory complexity, empowering states and tribes and ensuring wildlife management decisions are practical, science-based and effective on the ground,” according to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior. “The rule does not change the grizzly bear’s listing status under the Endangered Species Act and does not affect existing experimental population designations.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service is reopening a 30-day public comment period on the revised proposed 4(d) rule. The revision updates a January 2025 proposal and focuses solely on the 4(d) provisions. The service is not proposing changes to, and is not seeking additional comment on, other components of the January 2025 proposed rule.
The governors said under the 4(d) rule, states would not have the authority to have hunting seasons.
This announcement applies to the about 2,000 bears in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Washington — about half of which are in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The last time the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to delist grizzlies in 2017, Wyoming and Idaho created hunting seasons. Wyoming issued 22 tags, but the hunt never came to fruition, as environmentalists sued to resume protections and a judge ruled in their favor.
Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have argued it’s time for federal protections to go away. They say grizzly numbers are up and they’ve met population targets.
“ As you heard here, the goal of the Endangered Species Act is recovery,” said Gianforte. “Today, that recovery is being recognized. Recovery was never the end of the story, though, for this iconic species. The next chapter is about stewardship. State management does not mean the work is over. In many ways, it means the work becomes even more important.”
“It’s just more than fitting and proper that the state wildlife management agencies and all three of our states work together on a lot of cross-boundary wildlife issues, whether it’s management, whether it’s ungulate populations, fill in the blank,” added Little. “This is the right thing to do for this part of the country, and it’s the right thing to do for the United States of America, so I couldn’t be happier to be here.”
But many environmentalists say the bears occupy only a slice of their historic range, populations aren’t genetically diverse enough and states aren’t ready to take on management.
“This is a decision being made for political reasons, it is not based on science, in the best interest of the survival of the species, or in compliance with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act,” said Greg LeDonne, Idaho director of Western Watersheds Project. “It’s clearly too soon to remove federal protections in light of the continued lack of connectivity, ongoing habitat destruction and modification due to climate change, and record numbers of grizzly bear mortalities in 2025 even under existing protections.”
Western Watersheds issued a press release that framed the proposal as a step toward delisting, which has yet to be confirmed. The group also pointed to a recent federal court ruling that says recovery of an ESA species must occur throughout that species’ historic range, not just where they’re currently found, which could expand the area where grizzly bear recovery should be expected.
How we got here
Grizzlies have largely been on the Endangered Species Act list since 1975.
The last proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service, released in the final days of the Biden administration, would have kept them on the list with some tweaks, such as giving landowners more flexibility around killing bears that threaten livestock.
After receiving more than 200,000 comments, the Fish and Wildlife Service was supposed to finalize the grizzly regulations by Jan. 31, as mandated by a court in Idaho. But the agency asked for an extension, citing staff turnover and regulatory backlog.
Federal District Judge David C. Nye approved the extension request until Dec. 18, highlighting that the final rule must comply with the ESA and either revise or remove the entire listing for grizzly bears in the lower 48 states.
Environmental groups expect the Fish and Wildlife Service to release its new proposal in the Federal Register any day.
Hanna Merzbach is the Wyoming Public Media-based Mountain West News Bureau reporter. The bureau is a collaboration of public radio newsrooms in seven Western states and NPR.
Are you aware that Wyoming Game and Fish has been doing about 90% of the grizzly bear management work for over 25 years and expended over $70 million on the grizzly program. Why?? G and F has the in-place infrastructure to manage the great bears – that being the Cody Regional Office, Cheyenne staff, in-place game wardens and wildlife biologists, a state lab, vehicles, horses and much more. Thats called boots on the ground. USFWS simply doesn’t have that setup or the staff to do the field work and office work and they must split their time between all species they are charge with managing. So lets recognize who’s actually doing the work. And, the $70 million was generated by sales of hunting and fishing licenses. That is, the general public – and they overwhelmingly support grizzly recovery – are not paying for the cost of managing the great bears. That’s a major flaw in the ESA – the American public should be carrying the financial burden of recovery. So what do we get instead. Wildlife management by the federal courts that have been shamelessly manipulated by advocacy groups for years.
The grizzly bear recovery plans were adopted by a full public participation process that clearly delineated the core habitat and population goals. WYOFILES Mike Koshmir wrote several superb articles complete with maps of occupied territory which clearly showed the great bears have expanded their range far beyond the habitat which the recovery plans settled on. The formal recovery plans have not been followed and that’s an understatement. This is a massive failure of the ESA which needs revision to include limits on federal court interference in wildlife management. Wildlife management should be left to the professionals not federal courts which are petitioned via ” court shopping “.
Enough is enough. Its way past time for the states to take over grizzly bear management although we’ve been doing most of it anyway and not getting the reorganization Wyoming deserves.
Finally, there’s a point at which its time to publicly declare that grizzly bear recovery has been widely successful and exceeds the goals established in the recovery plans. Lets declare mission accomplished and let the states take it from here.
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Lee Campbell : the Wyoming G&F Bear Wranglers are subcontractors to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Yes,as yous ay $ 75 million has been spent on grizzly management. But very little of that was Wyoming money . The taxpayers and sportsmen really are not paying out of pocket for grizzly work out ofthe Cody or Jackson bases. It’s federal pass through funding from a variety of accounts, all of which come with terms and conditions. Wyo G&F still has to work under the framework the feds decree. USFWS has most of the say in the day to day framework , and all of the say when it comes to deciding what bears live and which must die. Truth be told, left to their own means, Wyoming Game & Fish would be killing a LOT of grizzly bears. They would be very happy if there were 200-300 fewer bears in the GYE.
Except when you take the wider God’s Eye view of the interior of North America , you would see millions of acres of good to prime Grizzly habitat in 5 other states that have statistically zero bears currently – but used to. Wyoming’s ” surplus ” or unwanted bears need to be translocated to currently vacant habitat well before they are killed. The problem is when we partition bear management to the states, those states have no desire or mechanism tor epopulated grizzlies to other domains. That is precisely why the entire Lower 48 Grizzly Bear Recovery program has been both a federal and state failure for the past 51 years. Too many stakeholders ands politicians getting in the way , and nobody standing up for nears on a continental landscape scale. QED..
Dewey, you said “The taxpayers and sportsmen really are not paying out of pocket for grizzly work out of the Cody or Jackson bases. It’s federal pass through funding from a variety of accounts, all of which come with terms and conditions.”
WRONG! Americans pay 6-8 dollars an lb for hamburger, 2$ for a snickers bar, 500K for a home, etc. etc. etc..
INFLATION is the tax we are all paying for reckless Govt. debt spending and money printing to cover it. Federal spending comes out of our grandchildren’s pockets.
There is ZERO need for more griz anywhere, but if you insist start with the Sierra Nevada of California specifically the Shores of Lake Tahoe to relocate. And dont take our bears take the surplus from Kodiak Island Alaska, because “a bear is a bear”, right?.
Dewey: Continental landscape grizzly bear reintroduction is impossible. What is possible in the lower 48 is designating grizzly bear occupied habit on large tracts of Federal land – excepting BLM land – and that means National parks, National monuments, wilderness areas and USFS lands adjacent to the other parcels of land, and, the sum total of acreage should exceed 5,000,000 million acres with minimal private land inside, The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem fits that definition as do the grizzly bear reintroduction sites in Montana and Idaho.
Its a fallacy to believe grizzly bears can be reintroduced on a landscape wide basis; however , that is the scenario in Alaska and Canada where huge acreages are available. The Colorado wolf reintroduction program has experienced major problems simply because the land ownership pattern is too fragmented and large blocks of Federal land are not available – too many old patented mining claims and homesteaded lands in the mountains.
The wolf and grizzly bear reintroduction plans as adopted via the management plans did not allow for wolves and grizzly bears occupying BLM and private land – that eliminates the possibility of landscape wide continental reintroduction.
. We’ve done the best we could under the available land for occupation scenario but it has limits and those limits have been grossly exceeded with respect to grizzly bear identified and approved habitat. The best available habitat is in Alaska and Canada – I agree there is some open habitat in the Sierra Nevada where large tracts/blocks of Federal land could be designated as suitable habitat and those combined acreages should easily exceed the 5,000,000 million acres of designated habitat in the GYES.
Sorry, Governors and Federales . You’re a few States short. What about Washington , Oregon , Sierra California , Uintah Utah , western Colorado ? Any collaboration with Alberta and B.C. ? Do you know that Arizona and New Mexico, and Sonora and Chihuahua in Old Mexico have good bear habitat?
I have next to zero confidence that WY-MT-ID State agencies have taken the bear’s interest to heart with the long view. If a Stockgrower snorts, a Safari Clubber wants to just kill something, or a logger or oil & gas Landman needs a money fix, the State will accomodate.
It never really was about what the bears want or need … or correcting mistakes made during the fever dream of Manifest Destiny starting a couple centuries ago.
Dewey good to see you’re still scrapping? With the powers that be. It’s been over 40 years since I’ve seen you when I used to work at the Eastgate. Your fearless in the fray.👍
Limited managed hunts were needed over a decade ago. The GYE has been saturated and beyond carrying capacity for grizzlies for a very long time.