BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration took a first step Feb. 3 toward ending federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which would open the door to future hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said state officials provided “substantial” information that grizzlies have recovered from the threat of extinction in the regions surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.
But federal officials rejected claims by Idaho that protections should be lifted beyond those areas and raised concerns about new laws from the Republican-led states that could potentially harm grizzly populations.
“We will fully evaluate these and other potential threats,” said Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Williams told the head of Montana’s wildlife agency in a Feb. 1 letter that a law allowing grizzlies to be killed if they attack livestock was inconsistent with the state’s commitment to bear conservation. She said the 2023 legislative session offered a “good opportunity” to address such problems.
The Fish and Wildlife Service action kicks off at least a year of further study before final decisions about the Yellowstone and Glacier regions.
The states want protections lifted so they can regain management of grizzlies and offer hunts to the public. As grizzly populations have expanded, more of the animals have moved into areas occupied by people, creating public safety issues and problems for farmers.
State officials have insisted future hunts would be limited and not endanger the overall population.
After grizzlies temporarily lost their protections in the Yellowstone region several years ago, Wyoming and Idaho scheduled hunts that would have allowed fewer than two dozen bears to be killed in the initial hunting season.
In Wyoming, almost 1,500 people applied for 12 grizzly bear licenses in 2018 before the hunt was blocked in federal court. About a third of the applicants came from out of state. Idaho issued just one grizzly license before the hunt was blocked.
Republican lawmakers in the region in recent years also adopted more aggressive policies against gray wolves, including loosened trapping rules that could lead to grizzlies being inadvertently killed.
As many as 50,000 grizzlies once roamed the western half of the U.S. They were exterminated in most of the country early in the 190ss by overhunting and trapping, and the last hunts in the northern Rockies occurred decades ago. There are now more than 2,000 bears in the Lower 48 states and much larger populations in Alaska, where hunting is allowed.
The species’ expansion in the Glacier and Yellowstone areas has led to conflicts between humans and bears, including periodic attacks on livestock and sometimes the fatal mauling of humans.
The federal government in 2017 sought to remove protections for the Yellowstone ecosystem’s grizzlies under former President Donald Trump. The hunts in Wyoming and Idaho were set to begin when a judge restored protections, siding with environmental groups that said delisting wasn’t based on sound science.
Those groups want federal protections kept in place and no hunting allowed so bears can continue moving into new areas.
“We should not be ready to trust the states,” said attorney Andrea Zaccardi, of the Center for Biological Diversity. Derek Goldman with the Endangered Species Coalition said state management would be a disaster and was glad federal agencies were looking at the states’ laws.
Dave Evans, a hunting guide with Wood River Ranch in Meeteetse, Wyoming, said the issue is complex, and he can understand why people fall on both sides of the debate.
“You have so many opinions and some of them are not based on science, but the biologists are the ones that know the facts about what the populations are and what should be considered a goal for each area,” Evans said.
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