The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been asked to change the way it handles grizzly recovery in the Northern Rockies/NPS

A coalition of groups asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday to revise the approach it takes to measuring grizzly bear recovery in the Northern Rockies, saying the current approach is outdated and has led to too many bear deaths.

A petition (attached below) sent to Fish and Wildlife, filed about a month ahead of the agency's January deadline for deciding whether to remove grizzlies from Endangered Species Act protections, points to a new science-based report by Dr. Christopher Servheen, the former USFWS Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator (1981-2016). 

While it's too early to say how the second Trump administration might handle grizzly listing under the ESA, the Project 2025 report written in anticipation that a Republican would win the 2024 presidential election, calls on a Republican administration to delist grizzlies.

Beyond that, the first Trump administration sent mixed signals on the species. While that administration's first Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, was in favor of grizzly recovery for the North Cascades Ecosystem, his successor, David Bernhardt, halted work on that effort. The arrival of the Biden administration, however, restarted that effort and this past April the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans to move forward with a recovery plan.

The first Trump administration also was sued over failure to update the federal recovery plan for grizzly bears, and that lawsuit led to a judge to order Fish and Wildlife to review the species' status in the Lower 48 states.

Now groups want the wildlife agency to update its Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan to incorporate the points raised in Servheen’s report, which details site-specific management actions to aid in the bears’ recovery. Servheen led the team that wrote the existing recovery plan for grizzly bears in 1993, and is now calling for this work to be updated with the best available science and latest conservation practices. Servheen says the new management approach would give bears a chance at a durable recovery. 

"Grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies occupy only 4 percent of their former range in the lower 48 states," said Servheen. “Grizzly presence is part of what makes this part of America so special. We should choose a careful management approach that will assure the future for these magnificent animals because they are an important part of the heritage of the American West.”

The petition and recovery plan updates come during a record-breaking deadly year for grizzlies, according to Earthjustice, which filed the petition. Seventy-three grizzly bears have been killed in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem alone, the group said. Throughout the U.S. Northern Rockies, at least 90 grizzly bears have died this year due to human causes. In his paper, Servheen highlights a number of mounting threats to grizzlies, including:

• Increased human development and encroachment into grizzly territory;
• New state laws and policies that are lethal to grizzlies and other carnivores;
• The ongoing harms from climate change on grizzly bears and their habitats; 
• Other land uses that are bringing grizzlies into more contact with humans and livestock. 

Servheen’s proposed updates to the 1993 Recovery Plan include the following revisions:

• A switch from management of the Northern Rockies bears in five distinct and isolated populations to a single, interconnected metapopulation of grizzlies across the region;
• New protections for grizzlies against potentially lethal human activities;
• Protections for grizzly habitat and careful mortality management in connectivity areas between ecosystems;
• Policies that reduce human/bear conflicts through increasing resources and assistance forcommunities;
• Reliable commitments from state and federal agencies to maintain grizzly and habitat protections after delisting. 

Earthjustice led the petition effort, submitting it on behalf of the following 14 groups: Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Coalition, Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of the Clearwater, Great Bear Foundation, Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, Park County Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians ,Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, and Yaak Valley Forest Council.

“Grizzlies need a new vision for recovery that incorporates the latest science and conservation practices,” said Mary Cochenour, senior attorney in Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office. “Grizzly bears have not achieved recovery under the old 1993 plan because it could not have anticipated the level of modern-day human encroachment in grizzly habitat, nor did the 1993 plan foresee the recent enactment of state and federal regulations and policy that continue to undermine recovery efforts.”