On January 8, 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected petitions from the states of Montana and Wyoming to strip grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies of their important federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections. Unfortunately, on January 15, 2025, the agency also proposed to shrink the area in which grizzlies are protected and to weaken their existing protections. This proposal kicked off a rulemaking process with a public comment period.
Grizzly bears were listed under the ESA in 1975 after being pushed to the brink of extinction in the lower 48. Progress to recover grizzly bear populations has been slow due to the bear’s low reproductive rates, the elimination of key food sources, and rapid human population growth and accompanying development across their range. And way too many grizzlies are recklessly killed by humans every year—whether by cars, trains, or by government agents acting on behalf of intolerant ranchers.
Alarmingly, even as grizzly bears still remain protected by the ESA, the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana have already developed plans for trophy hunting grizzlies—even in Wilderness.
It’s essential that the Great Bear retains its federal protections, and Wilderness Watch is advocating for continued threatened species status under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
We’re supporting the USFWS’ decision to essentially continue to protect grizzlies as a single distinct population segment (DPS) and to abandon the current approach that treats each population as distinct. Population geneticists tell us that to maintain a viable population for the long term there needs to be a population of at least 5,000 bears in the Northern Rockies. That will only happen with an interconnected population that includes all of the current core populations, a robust population in the Greater Salmon-Selway-Bitterroot region, and all of the suitable habitat surrounding and between these populations. To that end, Wilderness Watch is supporting the proposed rule’s focus on natural connectivity between the core populations and between those areas and the Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem.
However, the DPS leaves out other potential areas that are connected to the Northern Rockies, including the Greater Hells Canyon region and the High Uintas ecosystem. Grizzlies are known to have been in very close proximity to both regions, and with protection and tolerance we can expect them to take up residence within the next 50 years.
Additionally, Wilderness Watch opposes stripping ESA protected status from grizzlies that explore beyond the proposed DPS. Any grizzly bear, regardless of where it is found, deserves full protection of the ESA. And, we oppose a trophy hunting season for grizzly bears, under any circumstances.
We’re also urging the USFWS to drop its proposed 4(d) rule, which would relax the rules for killing grizzlies when too many are already needlessly dying at the hands of humans. Specifically on public lands, no grizzlies should be killed for preying on livestock. On private lands, no bears should be killed for preying on livestock unless all reasonable non-lethal measures have been deployed. There are places like the Blackfoot drainage in Montana where ranchers and other private landowners have shown how to co-exist with bears. Those lessons need to be deployed widely, but the proposed rule instead encourages less tolerance.
Also, no serious assessment of future threats to bears can ignore the impacts from recreation. There is mounting evidence showing that recreationists are displacing bears from preferred habitats, even in remote Wilderness and national parks. The proposed rule ignores this extremely significant threat, and that needs to change.
Finally, Wilderness Watch hopes the proposed rule will be seen as an opportunity for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee to change its tunnel-vision focus on trying to prematurely delist grizzly bears to focusing instead on what needs to be done to ensure the Great Bear will find a suitable and welcoming home as it reinhabits—on its own time and its own way—the entirety of the Northern Rockies ecosystem.
Photo: Sam Parks
Read our comments (coming soon)
As part of our ongoing work to defend grizzly bears and the wild habitats they require, Wilderness Watch and our allies recently released “A New Vision for Grizzly Bear Recovery in the Northern Rockies.” Our vision bolsters support for a unified grizzly bear population within the Northern Rockies—offering a holistic framework for recovery, management, and sustainable coexistence between bears and people.
We envision the maintenance of all currently secure grizzly bear habitat, and expanding those areas based on scientific data. As one might expect, designated Wilderness areas and the large national parks are the strongholds for grizzly bear populations in the Northern Rockies, providing secure habitat and isolation from harassment and displacement. Our vision promotes safeguards ensuring the Great Bear can thrive in these wild places, protected from intentional and unintentional harm, and where they can live out their lives without the trammeling impacts of humans.
The vision also emphasizes the need to reduce conflicts with livestock owners, calling for non-lethal deterrents, and retiring livestock grazing authorizations on public lands—including in Wilderness. It also recommends changes in state management practices, including prohibiting the hunting of grizzly bears, changes in trapping and snaring regulations, and banning the use of baits to attract bears and hunting bears with hounds. It would also require those visiting grizzly bear habitat to carry bear spray.
Importantly, our vision also emphatically supports maintaining grizzly bears’ threatened status under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the lower 48 states, and recognizes that true recovery requires protected habitats that connect isolated populations into a single population to ensure grizzlies can thrive for centuries to come.
