Grizzly-bear recovery has been so successful in and around Yellowstone National Park that the animals no longer need protection under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials said Thursday.
More than 500 bears now live in the Yellowstone area, which straddles Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. There were 200 bears when the animal was listed as threatened in 1975.
“All Americans should be proud that, as a nation, we had the will and the ability to protect and restore this symbol of the wild,” Deputy Interior Director Lynn Scarlett said in a statement.
Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s grizzly- bear recovery coordinator, said politics had nothing to do with delisting the bear.
“I’ve been working on this issue for 26 years now,” he said. “It’s taken this long because we have been so meticulous in establishing a system for the future of the bear. There has been no political pressure on me. This is strictly biologically based.”
The official action of removing the bear from the list will take place Thursday and will be followed by a 30-day waiting period, said Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The proposal to remove the bear was first announced in November 2005.
“It is an occasion to celebrate the success of the Endangered Species Act,” said Doug Inkley, senior science adviser to the National Wildlife Federation. “This delisting today shows and demonstrates the Endangered Species Act has been very successful.”
Grizzly bears remain under federal protection in northern parts of Idaho, Washington and Montana.
Removing the Yellowstone bear from federal protection opens the animal to hunting, said Hall. He predicted only a “handful” would be allowed to be taken every year.
Hunting rules and regulations would be left up to the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, he said.
Louisa Wilcox, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Wild Bears Project, says her group disagrees with the delisting and will “pursue every avenue possible, including a lawsuit and congressional action, to protect the bears.”
While grizzlies are recovering, they also are being threatened by global-warming effects, she said.
One of the bear’s primary food sources, the white bark pine tree, is disappearing under the attack of beetles that are proliferating because of warmer temperatures, she said.
“Recognize that grizzly bears and polar bears are close cousins,” Wilcox said, alluding to the plight of polar bears, which are struggling with melting sea ice that sustains them.
“They are going to live in a world of shrinking habitat because of warming weather,” Wilcox said about the grizzly bears.
“Grizzlies have made a dramatic comeback,” she said. “But they are not out of the woods yet.”
Grizzly bears in Yellowstone will continue to be managed under the Yellowstone Conservation Strategy through cooperation by the states of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service.
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
