A judge has ordered federal wildlife officials to decide by Jan. 20 whether Yellowstone-area grizzly bears should be delisted from the Endangered Species Act.
The order, issued by U.S. District Court of Wyoming Judge Alan Johnson, could speed up a potential handover of authority to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana — opening the door for grizzly bear hunting.
Johnson issued the decision Friday in response to a Wyoming petition that sought to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to honor a missed one-year deadline to determine if the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem system’s isolated grizzly bear population still warrant “threatened” status. If the agency meets the new 45-day deadline its decision will have taken about three times as long as originally scheduled — with a court-ordered determination due just as the second Trump administration begins.
“[T]he Court finds it proper to require FWS to issue its 12-month finding within 45 days of this Order,” Johnson wrote in a legal filing. “To be sure, this deadline will allow FWS to take its mandatory action nearly two years after it was initially due, as well as within a mere few weeks of the schedule it already indicated it could meet on its own.”
Johnson’s order was directed at outgoing U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams.
The federal wildlife agency was already operating under a self-imposed administrative deadline of Jan. 31, 2025 — but only after blowing a July deadline, much to the ire of Wyoming officials. The 45-day deadline, the judge wrote, will “prevent the Service from again failing to meet its own internal schedule.”
Gov. Mark Gordon applauded Johnson’s ruling in a statement his office released Friday.
“With the bear recovered, it is long past time for GYE grizzly bear management to be entrusted to the states,” Gordon said. “The USFWS can no longer stand unresponsive to our petition to move forward with the delisting process.”
In early 2023, the Fish and Wildlife Service initially responded favorably to Wyoming’s petition seeking a third attempt at delisting Yellowstone-region grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act. Under the act, Ursus arctos horribilis has been managed as “threatened” since 1975.
The Greater Yellowstone area’s grizzly population has long achieved recovery goals, and the species’ resurgence is considered a conservation success. Numbers in the core of the ecosystem where managers count grizzlies have more than tripled over the last four decades, reaching nearly 1,000 animals, according to the most recent population estimate.
But both times the bruins have previously been delisted — twice in the last 17 years, most recently in 2017— lawsuits from environmental advocacy groups successfully overturned the decisions.
Although the Fish and Wildlife Service is now staring down a fast-approaching deadline, a long administrative process including a proposed rule, final rule and multiple periods of public input will have preceded any potential shift of grizzly bear jurisdiction from the federal government to the Northern Rocky states.
If the states do gain control, it’s all but assured that they will pursue the first grizzly bear hunting seasons in the Lower 48 in a half-century.
De-listing should happen. 1) The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has worked and the bear has recovered. For thos who say no to de-listing they are basically sayin the act does not work or it is all a scam to lock up fdereal land. 2) bear “experts” like former US Fish and Wildlife bear guys want to return things to the way they were before the settlers arrived. This is a pipe dream. These guys and NGOs have deleayed delisting far too long. The bear population is solid and has been for years. Bears are pushing out into new areas too. It is long past time to de-list. Of course the bears will still be actively managed and protected. You don’t need the ESA to protect a healthy population.
This can never be settled fairly as long as only one group pays the cost of
lots of grizzlies (and wolves while thee group that wants control pays nothing.
in fact hauls in donations from people who want to “save the predators”. Expecting our food producers to pay the entire cost of a lotta wolves and bears, including griz is selfish and wrong.
The fallacy in this whole argument is that the key is in choosing the correct geographic size to bas the decision on.
Should the area be only Yellowstone Park? Should it be Wyoming or Idaho or Montana alone? Or all three? Should it be the entire western US or the entire US? Should it include Canada?
Deciding on the area to be measured and regulated is the key factor in determining to the population and health of the grizzly population and whether they are threatened in that area. This apples to all wildlife.
Pick a small enough or specific enough random area to study and you can get whatever results you want.
Unfortunately, most of these people crying about delisting the grizzly bear in Yellowstone area, Have no idea what it’s like to have to live with and deal with these bears. They would probably change their mind after they had to deal with the idea or the
realization that a grizzly had ripped them up and ruined their life or a loved ones. We do not want to see them killed or have them eliminated. We just want the conflicts between humans and bears to decrease not increase. There numbers have to be managed and they have to be managed in a way thats not detrimental to people.
I feel the Grizzly Bears should not be delisted. We have lost 84 so far this year. I feel hunters will go wild killing these bears and soon we will be back where we started. Right now hunters do not carry bear spray, ranchers do not put up fencing and cows wander into Grizzly habitat. We build houses in their habitat. They have ran out of room. Humans kill them and say self defense. Kill the mother, injure a cub and the other cub is left to survive on it’s own and most likely dies or is killed. That is 3 bears. That is only one incident. There are many situations. If you hunt by the park and run into a Griz, well that is their home. Hunters have to be accountable for their actions. A dead Griz can not speak for itself.
I find it so interesting that the reason the Grizzlies have recovered is SOLEY because the Federal Gov has managed them. Now that they are finally coming back, Mr Gordon wants to take over and have the states manage them — why. One reason — so the state can manage them being hunted. I don’t understand why they state does not appreciate all the good having grizzlies does for them with tourism and being a leader of grizzilies in the US. But just like the land in WY that get gobbles up by rich OUTSIDERS so will be the fate of grizzlies.
Umm…no. Grizzlies have recovered because the State of Wyoming has provided the vast majority of grizzly bear management for the past 46 years, spending about $70 million provided by hunters and anglers in Wyoming. The statement that they have “recovered SOLELY because the Federal Gov has managed them” is simply false.
Good and factual reply.
Looking from another country please save the bears no need to hunt them just for the sake of it
There are many reasons NOT to kill grizzlies. It is proven they actually have emotions similar to humans meaning when they lose one they grieve. There must be a better solution!
Long overdue Federal court decision but unfortunately more wildlife management by the courts which doesn’t seem to work. Grizzly bear management was decided upon years ago by an open public participation process which resulted in the “Final Conservation Strategy for the Grizzly Bear in the Yellowstone Ecosystem” – I have a copy right here now. We need to trust the wildlife managers and the public scrutiny process including the original decision to list, the EIS and the state management plans which were approved by the USFWS. The whole grizzly bear recovery plans were decided upon years ago – what we are witnessing is ongoing second guessing and bringing up issues which are already decided. Ultimately, wildlife management by the courts results in the necessity of congressional action to put an end to the court failures. Example, Montana and Idaho wolves were delisted by congressional action whence the congressional delegates of those states attached a rider to an appropriations bill – hope I got that right. It can and will happen again if the USFWS doesn’t delisted the great bears by January 20th. The Wyoming congressional delegates are willing to delist by congressional action next year if the USFWS doesn’t act promptly. What we are witnessing are the failures of the ESA.
One of more obvious failures of the ESA is the financial obligation which Wyoming has incurred whilst managing the grizzly bears in NW Wyoming. I believe Wyoming has expended about $70 million managing the great bears on behalf of the vast majority of the citizens of this country who want he bears recovered – the problem is they aren’t footing the bill – all of that money comes from sales of licenses to hunters and anglers in Wyoming. A great injustice to say the least. Grizzly bear recovery advocates need to pay their share of the recovery costs and Wyoming needs to be reimbursed for our recovery expenditures.
Dewey’s right. Grizzly bears need to be reintroduced in the habitats which he recommended in his comments. Wyoming certainly has the ability to provide up to several hundred bears to the other states – maybe we could sell some of our excess bears and recover some of our money!!!
Finally, I recognize this is an emotional issue – but we need to stick to the facts and the agreed upon management plans – and that means avoiding any more Federal court cases – if this ruling doesn’t put the grizzly bear matter to rest – then it’s definitely time for congressional action.
Thank you for posting that. The information you provide in your comments is appreciated.
Lee A. Campbell guest column on wyofile anytime soon?
Between road kill grizzlies and the Flipping bow and string secondary killers, the Grizzlies have had a hard time the past couple years. Do not take them off the list as an endangered or threatened species. They still are and if action needs to be taken, run some of them elk hunters back to Idaho and E. WA and Ore where they can ride around on them ATV’s and road hunt. That is all they want any way.
No plan or procedure to delist Grizzly Bears should be allowed without ironclad provisions to restore the bear to the millions of acres of currently unoccupied but excellent grizzly habitat throughout the West . That means the Unita Mountains of Wyoming/Utah , the San Juans and elsewhere in Colorado, the North Cascades of Washington among other places. Including California…. the only griz left there are the ones on the state flag. First and foremost Wyoming Idaho and Montana need to establish a means to move Wyoming’s ” surplus” bears to the vast empty wildlands of central Idaho – the Selway-Bitterroot , and up the Northern Continental Divide all the way to British Columbia. There are too few bears and too many manmade impediments for the Griz to do this on their own after 150 years of killdown. We humans physically congested the Bear into the GYE, so the humans should rectify their mistakes with translocations. Climate change is increasing the urgency of all of this.
After 40 years of advocating for grizzlies out of my Cody , the bottom line is I feel really let down by the Wyoming Game & Fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service for abrogating their responsibilty to restore Grizzly Bears on a long landscape time scale by choosing instead to take the political paths of least resistance. You don’t want to know what I think after observing the commercial trophy hunters and blood sportsmen in the same time frame.
Unfortunately Grizzlies and humans can’t co exist. To many city people trekking in the woods and streams. And to many cars on the roads
More bears = more conflicts and deaths
P.S. – State wildlife agencies – Montana FWP , Wyoming G&F , Idaho F&G – are the very LAST entites you want managing the restoration and sustainability of a transcontinental endangered megafauna species. Thos agencies honestly cannot or will not segregate themselves from treating large animals as game animals first and wildlife secondarily. That’s backasswards. All game animals are wildlife, but not all wildlife are game. The distinction is critical. Example : The North American Wildlife Model was written by and for hunters. It was based on half truths then , and is obsolete now. Predators, the essential predator-prey relationship, and landscape scale long timescale management are not given weight. The word Ecology did not even exist at the time the NAWM was drafted by Teddy Roosevelt and his peers. The Grizzly Bear being the apex species is where all the issues surrounding Endangered Species Act implementation are comingled. Frankly , we have failed at it, because we digressed into politics away from science. We can collectively make the necessary corrections , at least in the near term if we act wisely. But the clock is ticking. Giving grizzly management over to Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho would be a severe regression; a grade of D-.
Oh boy! “No plan or procedure to delist Grizzly Bears should be allowed without ironclad provisions to restore the bear to the millions of acres of currently unoccupied but excellent grizzly habitat throughout the West” sounds like Chris you know who in Montana. Your vision does not comport with the actual goals of the ESA. This is called mission creep. But OK.
Grizzlies shouldn’t be de-listed and wolves need to be put back on the Endangered Species list until the laws in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana don’t allow people to chase down wildlife with snowmobiles. That’s not a fair hunt; it’s inhumane and cruel.
FYI, I’ve written to the Dept. of USFWS and the Dept. of Interior. Please, everyone do the same! It’s easy to do online.
How can I support an environmental advocacy groups to successfully to keep the GRL bear on the endangered list and halt the ability for up to 39 being shot to death in 2025?
Exactly!!! Grizzly 399!! In her name i pray!!!
18 cubs!
Let these magnificent animals be. What does humanity gain from their death? Nature knows how to maintain a healthy population without them intervention of man.
Long overdue.
Now would be a good time to relocate some in Colorado and California with full protection.
Agreed
CA would be a great place. The Grizzly is on the state flag