Groups charge U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is threatening survival of grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem/NPS, Neal Herbert

Approved "takings" of grizzly bears in part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem threaten to undercut recovery of the species, according to groups that plan to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the matter.

At issue is the decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service to allow the deaths of up to 15 grizzly bears in Grand Teton National Park and the Upper Green River area of northwest Wyoming.

According to a release from Earthjustice, which is handling the lawsuit for the Sierra Club and the Western Watersheds Project, FWS in September 2013 authorized the National Park Service to proceed with an elk hunt in Grand Teton National Park that is "anticipated to cause the lethal take of four grizzly bears over a nine-year period."

Then, this past September the agency "authorized the Forest Service to continue livestock grazing operations in the Upper Green River area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest that are anticipated to cause the lethal take of 11 more grizzly bears within any consecutive three-year period through the end of 2019."

Compounding the problem, the groups said, is that Fish and Wildlife Service officials failed to "acknowledge or consider the fact that the Grand Teton and Upper Green 'take' determinations, when combined with similar 'take' determinations issued by FWS and currently in effect for other actions around the Yellowstone region, anticipate the killing of as many as 65 female grizzly bears in a single year'”a level that more than triples FWS'™s own established mortality limit."

'œKilling 15 more bears in the Yellowstone region, including even in one of our nation'™s premier national parks, could be the straw that breaks the camel'™s'”or, in this case, the grizzly'™s'”back,' said Earthjustice attorney Tim Preso. 'œThe Endangered Species Act requires federal officials to look at that big picture, yet they failed to do so.'

Over at the Sierra Club, Bonnie Rice said Fish and Wildlife officials are not looking at "the broader impact on grizzly recovery in the region."

"Taken together, the anticipated 'take' would exceed the agency'™s own limit for female grizzly bear deaths by more than three times,' said Ms. Rice. "With a slow reproducing animal like the grizzly bear, those numbers would have significant long-term consequences on grizzly recovery."

Travis Bruner, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, said the federal agency has failed to present "sound scientific reasoning that considers the regional impact on the species. We demand that the government rethink its approach, and base its decisions on science rather than politics and the interests of private livestock owners that graze cattle on our public lands.'

Yellowstone-area grizzly bears are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Federal biologists acknowledge that the growth of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population level has flattened over the past decade, according to the groups.

"At the same time, the grizzly population has been faced with the loss of two of its most important food sources in the Yellowstone region'”whitebark pine seeds and cutthroat trout'”due to changing environmental conditions driven in part by a warming climate," the release continued. "In the wake of these changes, scientists have documented the bears'™ transition to a more meat-based diet, but that diet leads to a greater potential for conflict with human hunting and livestock grazing activities."

The conservationists contend that FWS cannot rely on compliance with sustainable grizzly mortality thresholds to justify additional killing of Yellowstone bears unless federal officials consider the impacts of all the grizzly bear mortality they have anticipated across the region.