Feds Postpone Finalizing Yellowstone, Lower 48 Grizzly Bear Plans

Editor's note: The following story is from WyoFile.com and republished with their permission.

Court filing cites change of administration, government shutdown and ‘highly complex nature of grizzly bear rulemaking’ as reasons for postponing final rule.

The deadline for Trump administration officials to decide if Yellowstone-area grizzly bears should retain Endangered Species Act protections has been pushed back nearly a year. 

In January 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to petitions from Western states that called, in part, for ending the “threatened” designation that has protected Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzlies from hunting since the 1970s. In the waning days of the Biden administration, wildlife managers rejected the states’ pitches and instead offered a draft rule retaining federal protections in the region and managing Lower 48 grizzly bears as a collective, rather than as geographically distinct populations.

The Fish and Wildlife Service then had a year to finish its grizzly bear plan, a timeline set via a legal settlement with the state of Idaho. On January, however, federal attorneys filed paperwork in the U.S. District Court of Idaho seeking more time. 

“Grizzly bears are an extraordinarily complex species and generate significant public interest and involvement,” declared Gina Shultz, the service’s acting assistant director for ecological services. “Rulemaking for complex species such as grizzly bears requires significant staff time and agency resources.”

Shultz referenced the 200,000 public comments federal wildlife managers received in response to the January 2025 proposal. She also listed a series of hurdles encountered over the past year, including the change in the presidential administration, “unforeseen staffing turnover and shortages,” a regulatory backlog and the nearly 8-month-long delay in confirming Fish and Wildlife Director Brian Nesvik.

Shultz sought an extension until Dec. 18. On January 30, U.S. District Court Judge David Nye approved the request, calling the extension “proper, fair, reasonable and in the public interest.”

An environmental advocacy group that has litigated to retain federal protection for grizzly bears met the prolonged timeline with cautious optimism. 

“This extension is good news for grizzly bears because they’ll keep their existing federal protections for now,” said Andrea Zaccardi, legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity’s carnivore conservation program. “But if the Trump administration tries to strip grizzlies of those protections in the future then we’re ready to take them to court.” 

The Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service has not announced if it plans to fundamentally change the Biden administration’s proposal for managing the roughly 1,000 bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and elsewhere in grizzly range. But there are some indications the agency will use the just-granted extension to explore reversing or significantly altering the earlier plans.

Nesvik, the agency’s director, was a vocal advocate of delisting grizzlies during his tenure running the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. And he’s indicated in recent interviews that delisting could take a couple of years. 

Grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region have exceeded recovery goals since the early 2000s and federal wildlife managers have tried twice to turn over management to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. In both instances litigation reversed the decision.

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