A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide a status update on grizzly bears in the lower 48 by March 2021/NPS

A judge's directive that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service again review the status of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states could, perhaps, require the agency to look at states where the bears long have been gone for suitable habitat.

Whether Fish and Wildlife Service ends up looking at California, Washington state, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah for grizzly habitat remains to be seen. But on Monday a federal judge in Montana signed an order requiring the wildlife agency to review the status of grizzly bears by March 2021, and those behind the lawsuit that called for the review are thinking beyond Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho for bear recovery areas.

The agreement resolves one claim in the Center for Biological Diversity’s ongoing lawsuit that challenges the Trump administration’s failure to update the federal recovery plan for grizzly bears. The recovery plan is now more than 25 years old and does not reflect current science, according to the group.

“Grizzlies in the lower 48 still face an uphill battle to recovery,” said Andrea Santarsiere, a senior attorney at the Center. “I really hope this review will convince the Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit the idea of reintroducing grizzly bears in more areas of their historic range, as the agency proposed in its last status review.”

Grizzly bears in the lower 48 states have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since 1975. The ESA requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare a status review for listed species at least once every five years — yet the Center says the last status review for grizzlies was published more than eight years ago, in 2011.

The Center for Biological Diversity believes there are many places in the West that could support grizzly bears/Center for Biological Diversity

In that status review, the Service acknowledged that the 1993 recovery plan no longer reflected best available science and needed to be updated to consider additional recovery areas. The Center’s lawsuit asks the court to force the agency to update the outdated plan and evaluate the need to pursue grizzly bear recovery in additional areas where suitable habitat exists.

“It’s frustrating that we have to sue the Trump administration again and again to force it to follow the law,” Santarsiere said. “We look forward to receiving an updated recovery plan that can serve as a step toward fully recovering grizzly bears in the wild.”

Back in 2014 the nonprofit organization identified areas in the West that could possibly support grizzlies. A petition it filed with the Fish and Wildlife Service then identified 110,000 square miles of potential habitat in places like the Gila/Mogollon complex in Arizona and New Mexico, Utah’s Uinta Mountains, California’s Sierra Nevada, and the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

At the time the Center said returning bears to some or all of these areas is a crucial step toward recovering the species under the Endangered Species Act and could potentially triple the grizzly bear population in the lower 48, from a meager 1,500 to 1,800 today to as many as 6,000.

According to the organization, possibly more than 50,000 grizzly bears once ranged throughout most of western North America, from the high Arctic to the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico and from the coast of California across most of the Great Plains. Within 200 years of European settlement, wanton slaughter had reduced populations to perhaps several hundred bears, mostly found in Yellowstone National Park.

Outside the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide populations, very little progress has been made in recovering grizzlies. Remnant populations survive in less than 5 percent of the bears’ historic range, while large swaths of unoccupied, potentially suitable habitat have been identified by researchers.

The Center’s lawsuit follows the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to strip federal protection from Yellowstone grizzlies, which a judge overturned in September 2018.