SUBLETTE COUNTY – Wyoming is poised to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the removal of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act’s federal protections.

Gov. Mark Gordon addressed media Thursday to make the announcement, saying the GYE population “has met and exceeded all benchmarks for its recovery.”

Forty-six years ago in 1975 fewer than 300 grizzlies led to FWS listing them as “threatened.”

“Today there are more than 1,000,” Gordon said. “It’s time for the grizzly bear to be fully returned” to Wyoming Game and Fish management.

The state has spent $52 million in that time, he said.

For several months, Game and Fish and the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office evaluated “all of the options” for the GYE bears’ final delisting, placed on hold when an Idaho judge ruled the state needed to do more to ensure diversity and long-term health, he said.

Evaluations of genetic diversity in “ever-expanding bear country” and recalibration of a population model show Wyoming’s commitments with Montana and Idaho state wildlife agencies to maintain their recovery, the governor said.

Wyoming already has a grizzly bear management plan in place, and it will be amended to recognize the necessary legal requirements to satisfy the Endangered Species Act requirements for post-delisting management.

“The grizzly bear by all means has been fully recovered since 2003,” he said. “Today is a victory in the history of this species’ conservation in Wyoming and indeed the world.”

Game and Fish director Brian Nesvik said delisting GYE grizzlies will afford much more “proactive management” of problem bears than federal laws’ “reactive management.”

He called it “premature and speculative” to predict if and how a grizzly hunting season might reopen. “That’s quite a ways down the road – a year, two or three years down the road.”

Western wolves

Gov. Gordon listed the state’s “strong track record” in conservation and species’ recoveries, from mountain lions to gray wolves, his next topic.

“2020 was the 19^th consecutive year that gray wolves remained well above (FWS’) minimum recovery criteria to conserve wolves,” Gordon said, adding Idaho and Montana are also well above recovery levels.

“I am confident (FWS) will find Wyoming’s management successful and I expect the Fish and Wildlife Service will remain committed to the law,” he said in reference to the FWS’ Sept. 15 announcement it is undertaking an intense “status review” of western wolves.

Two coalitions petitioned for state-managed western gray wolves to be relisted as “endangered,” federal officials plan “a comprehensive status review of the gray wolf in the western U.S.”

FWS announced Sept. 15 it completed an initial review of a 52-page “emergency petition” filed June 1 by the Center for Biological Diversity and The Humane Society of the United States.

FWS also reviewed Western Watershed Project’s June 1 petition, sent on behalf of 70 nonprofits asking FWS to create a final rule that gray wolves are “endangered” in the western U.S.

Both are addressed to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland by way of FWS. Both refer to state management programs, especially in Idaho and Montana where new gray-wolf hunting quotas are considered.

The FWS said from Denver: “The Service finds the petitioners present substantial information that potential increases in human-caused mortality may pose a threat to the gray wolf in the western U.S. The Service also finds that new regulatory mechanisms in Idaho and Montana may be inadequate to address this threat. Therefore, the Service finds that gray wolves in the western U.S. may warrant listing.”

Next, FWS will determine if western gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains and western U.S. need to be protected as “endangered” or “threatened” under the ESA.

The petitions suggest FWS could revise boundaries of the Northern Rockies Distinct Population Segment by increasing its coverage or by creating one larger “Western U.S. DPS.”

Petitions

Western Watersheds’ petition seeks “ESA ‘endangered’ protection for gray wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, California, Nevada and northern Arizona” where wolves are documented.

“These wolves are at risk of extinction throughout all of their range, and unquestionably are at risk of immediate extinction in significant portions of their range,” it says. “This decimation could happen in a very short span of time, several years or less.”

Center for Biological Diversity’s petition states: “Hunters, trappers and private contractors in Idaho can kill up to 90 percent of the state’s estimated 1,500 wolves, using new—and highly effective—methods of hunting that were previously unavailable. In Montana, new rulemaking may pave the way for killing approximately 85 percent of the population, currently reported to be at 1,200 wolves. Unless the Service restores federal protections, the region’s wolves will soon lose decades of progress toward recovery.”

Reactions

Response to the FWS announcement came swiftly Wednesday.

U.S. Sen. John Barrasso blasted the FWS decision as “just more of the endless political antics from Washington bureaucrats and extreme environmentalists who have no interest in doing what’s right for Wyoming.”

Western Watershed’s executive director Erik Molvar was “gratified” by it, even if FWS “decided not to implement the protections of the Endangered Species Act immediately on an emergency basis, as requested. … We urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct its review as quickly as possible, so that wolves rapidly receive the protections they desperately need.”

For more

FWS posted both wolf petitions and its 90-day finding at www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/es/species/mammals/wolf. The public can submit information for the upcoming in-depth status review through the Federal Register at www.regulations.gov, Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2021-0106. The comment period opens Sept. 17.