Activists Seek to Block Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Delisting
Activists petition for four-state 'metapopulation' of grizzly bears, but the same groups are actively seeking permanent federal protection for wolves, grizzlies and bison.
A New Vision
On Dec. 11, Earthjustice issued a press release proclaiming that grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies are not recovered, with a link to its website that sets out a “New Vision for Grizzly Recovery.”
The petition appears to be a desperate attempt to keep grizzly bears under federal protection in wake of last week’s court-mandate that FWS issue a decision on whether it will delist grizzlies in the tri-state Yellowstone region within 45 days.
This “new vision” includes a map of “potential grizzly range with revised recovery plan” that encompasses much of western Wyoming in its four-state vision. It’s not just National Forests and National Parks that would be included, as the southern extent of this envisioned grizzly range is about 30 miles north of Rock Springs.
Starting at the southeastern corner of Idaho where it meets northern Utah at Bear Lake, the map envisions potential future grizzly range in Wyoming to include not just all the communities of Star Valley and all communities in Sublette and Teton counties, but also encompasses LaBarge, Farson, Eden, Atlantic City, and South Pass, and eastward to encompass Boysen Reservoir, then jaunting north to cover everything to the Montana border. Fremont County’s Lander, Riverton, Hudson, Kinnear, Crowheart, Dubois, Fort Washakie, Ethete, Arapahoe would be included as well.
That’s just Wyoming’s portion of this vision of a grizzly bear “metapopulation” that would be “managed as a single, interconnected population in the U.S. Northern Rockies” with its range extending across most of western Montana, central and northern Idaho, and northeastern Washington.
Note from Cat: Your support for Range Writing is appreciated. If you aren’t already a subscriber, please consider subscribing now. It’s free, and the latest posts will be delivered straight to your inbox weekly.
Recovery planning
The new vision and petition are based on a 32-page proposal by former U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) grizzly recovery coordinator-turned-activist Dr. Chris Servheen. The petition says that FWS “must revise its more than thirty-year-old recovery plan and bring it up to date with current best available science.” The insinuation that the recovery plan hasn’t been updated is rather insulting to bear managers and members of the public who have participated in the process of supplementing that recovery plan since 1993, including major supplements in 2007 and 2017, as well as other planning processes for grizzlies in this region.
The existing recovery plan requires achievement of two milestones to recovery, including success in meeting biological recovery goals, and creation of a Conservation Strategy to ensure that adequate regulatory mechanisms continue to be present after delisting. Biological recovery goals have been met since at least 2003, and the first Conservation Strategy for grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem was completed in 2003 and was revised in 2016. In addition, forest plans throughout the region were amended to provide for conservation of grizzly bear habitat, livestock allotments within the recovery zone were closed, and food storage orders have been implemented.
The 1993 Recovery Plan
The 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan set out grizzly bear recovery zones as “those areas within which grizzly bears and grizzly bear habitat will be managed for recovery and within which population parameters will be monitored.” It established recovery zones for the Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk ecosystems.
The recovery plan envisioned the delisting of each grizzly population as it achieved recovery goals. It stated:
“Each individual population will remain listed until its specific recovery criteria are met. The species throughout the lower 48 states can be delisted when the populations in all established recovery zones have been delisted.”
The yellow line in this Wyoming Game & Fish Department map is the Yellowstone Recovery Zone as delineated in the recovery plan, while the green shading is the extent of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population in 2020:
All the biological recovery goals for grizzlies in this region have long been met and the bear population has continued to increase in number while expanding its range.
By 2000, the Yellowstone-region’s grizzly bear population was located mostly within the Recovery Zone, but by 2022, the area of occupied range had steadily expanded at a rate of 3.65% per year. Grizzly range expanded from 8,880 square miles in 1990 to more than 27,000 square miles in 2022.
As the Wyoming Game & Fish Department reports, “As grizzly bears advance into new areas, they are encountering more human-dominated landscapes, many of which are private lands dominated by agricultural uses.” In 1990, the Yellowstone grizzly range included about 232 square miles of private land, ballooning to more than 4,400 square miles of private land in 2022.
Like my work? Buy me a coffee.
Shifting recovery goalposts
The lesson here is that once again, when recovery goals outlined in a recovery plan are reached, animal activists will try to move the goal posts to the far horizon.
Because the grizzly population in the Yellowstone ecosystem has exceeded recovery goals, activists are now trying to prohibit the delisting of the Yellowstone bear population until grizzlies in the four-state region of Northern Rockies form a recovered metapopulation.
The petition relies on Servheen’s proposed revisions to the recovery plan. Servheen contests changes in state laws in Montana and Idaho that allow for more wolf and black bear hunting. In my view, his proposal seeks to use grizzly bears to punish the states for what he calls “regressive anti-carnivore policies.”
Servheen’s proposal flatly states: “The greatest threats today to grizzly bear recovery and to eventually achieving grizzly bear delisting are the state legislatures and governors who are passing legislation that implements harmful anti-predator policies that are not informed by science and the lack of effective management of private land development adjacent to grizzly bear habitat on public lands and the negative impacts of such development.”
Servheen’s proposal for a revised recovery plan reads like a personal list of things he wants to ban:
• Permanently eliminate all wolf trapping and neck snaring in all areas of the Northern U.S. Rockies except between Jan. 1-Feb. 15 when most grizzlies are in dens.
• Permanently eliminate all shooting of wolves and other carnivores at night using bait, artificial lights, or night vision scopes in all areas in the Northern U.S. Rockies except between Jan. 1-Feb. 15.
• Permanently eliminate all hound hunting of black bears in all portions of the Northern U.S. Rockies.
• Prohibit sport hunting of grizzly bears in the Northern U.S. Rockies until this new vision of grizzly recovery is achieved.
His vision for the metapopulation proposes that Yellowstone National Park’s model of closing areas either temporarily or permanently to human entry should be undertaken on National Forests, and that public land managers impose a system to manage human use levels, timing, and distribution in this metapopulation’s four-state landscape. It also proposes that private land development should be treated as a threat to grizzly bears and this should be used “to assist counties in their land management evaluation and decision processes” for regulating private lands.
There is little concern for the human communities that would have to coexist within this metapopulation’s recovery area.
The petitioners
It’s important to note who is pushing this new plan for grizzlies. Wyoming Wildlife Advocates (WWA) teamed up with Western Watersheds Project, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Endangered Species Coalition, and a few other more local or regional activist groups in this petition.
In a press release announcing the petition, WWA’s Kristin Combs was quoted: “Those who are blind to the threats that grizzly bears are facing will say that the goalposts for recovery keep moving. The truth is that science is not static, it’s dynamic. We know a lot more than we did 30 years ago. As conditions change and we collect additional data, our knowledge becomes greater. Conditions in 1993 were vastly different than they are now. Updating the recovery plan should be a priority for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before any decisions about recovery are made.”
The call for new plan is a ploy
There are strong indications that the petition for a new recovery plan is a ploy to justify moving the recovery goalposts in the hope that delisting will never occur.
The first indicator is the statement on Wyoming Wildlife Advocates’s website that grizzly bears should be permanently protected.
The second indicator is that some of the same groups petitioning for this new vision of grizzly recovery have also joined together to seek permanent federal protection for grizzly bears, gray wolves, and bison as proposed in the Trinity Act sponsored by U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. That proposal also includes provisions for permanent closure of livestock grazing allotments and prohibitions on lethal predator control on public lands. Western Watersheds Project supports the Booker proposal, as does Sierra Club, Humane Society, and the Endangered Species Coalition (whose member organizations also include Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, Wyoming Untrapped, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Wyoming Outdoor Council, and Earthjustice).
What’s next
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has been trying to delist the Yellowstone grizzly population for the last 15 years, but is sued by activists organizations each time, resulting in court orders mandating new issues the federal agency must examine before it can begin the process anew.
In 2022, the State of Wyoming petitioned for the delisting of grizzlies in the Yellowstone region, and in early 2023 FWS published its finding that the delisting may be warranted but a final decision would come from a more in-depth review. When FWS missed the deadline for the decision, Wyoming sued the agency, resulting in last week’s federal court order that the agency issue its final decision with 45 days. That deadline happens to fall on Jan. 20, 2025 – the day the presidential administration transitions from President Joe Biden to President Donald J. Trump.