Republican members of Congress from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are pressing President Donald Trump to remove federal protections for grizzly bears.
In a letter to the president and Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, they blasted a decision by the Biden administration in January that rejected requests to remove grizzly bear populations near Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks from protection under the Endangered Species Act and instead propose a rule consolidate grizzlies in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Washington as a single population.
It was signed by Reps. Russ Fulcher of Idaho, Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing of Montana and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, who said the move would leave grizzlies under federal protection for generations and put the states in ESA purgatory.
“We call on you to scrap this flawed proposed rule and take the only appropriate action: remove recovered grizzly bear populations from the endangered species list and restore them to state management,” they wrote.
If the rule proposed under the Biden administration is adopted, the entire population of great bears would be managed as one with attention to connectivity between the core recovery areas.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a January news release that the rule would help areas like the Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho, that has ample grizzly habitat but no resident population, reach recovery sooner.
But the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide populations near Glacier and Yellowstone parks that each include about 1,000 bears would remain listed as threatened.
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com.
