The Interior Department announced yesterday that it was preparing to hand more management of grizzly bears to Western state fish-and-game agencies, a move that could eventually lead to federal delisting and a return to hunting of the iconic species.
The announcement by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik was made in core grizzly bear habitat just north of Yellowstone National Park, with Western governors in attendance. While details of specific management changes are virtually non-existent — the federal rules will be published on Friday — the Interior Department stresses that it is not removing grizzly bears from federal protections under the Endangered Species Act. Rather, it is proposing “to clarify the geographic area where grizzly bears in the lower 48 states are subject to protection under the Endangered Species Act.”
In areas where Interior deems they don’t deserve protections, either because bear numbers have exceeded population thresholds or because they are endangering life or property, the USFWS also “proposed revisions to the current protective regulations to provide additional management flexibility for authorized agencies and individuals experiencing conflicts with grizzly bears.”
Public comments will be received on the proposed rule, a revision of what’s called the federal 4(d) rule, through Aug. 17.
The news was widely hailed by hunting and livestock groups as well as by the Republican governors of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, who said their respective agencies are prepared to shoulder management responsibilities for bear populations that have swelled from a few hundred when they were listed as endangered in 1973 to more than 2,000 today. Grizzly bears have been steadily roaming outward from their strongholds in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex south of Glacier National Park and in the Yellowstone Ecosystem into habitats and human communities that are unaccustomed to dealing with the apex predators and opportunistic scavengers.
The rule announced yesterday authorizes state and tribal wildlife agencies to activate their own grizzly bear management plans, in coordination with the USFWS. Don’t expect states to immediately move toward proposing hunting seasons for grizzlies, as many environmental groups have warned. In Montana, at least, the state’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department has established a 5-year moratorium on hunting grizzlies.
“Director Nesvik, Secretary Burgum, and the entire leadership of the Department of the Interior have found a way to declare a conservation victory under ESA and to provide for continued conservation under state management,” said Simon Roosevelt, the Boone and Crockett Club’s executive vice president of conservation, research, and policy. “The rule advances grizzly conservation from the now-resolved problem of too few bears to the now-emerging realities of abundant bears. The predictable and misleading criticism of this will be that bears are losing protection. The accurate view is that bears and people are gaining the benefits of sustainable management.”
Burgum’s announcement did not indicate if or how much federal support will flow to states as they take on more grizzly bear management work. In both 2024 and 2025, at least 72 grizzly bear deaths were recorded each year, mostly at the hands of humans, according to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. That’s a roughly 35 percent increase from the 10-year average of 54 bear deaths. According to the Montana Grizzly Bear Conflict Dashboard, the state has recorded 101 conflicts so far this year, including 30 livestock depredations and 34 encounters with humans.
Back from the Brink
Grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1975. If federal oversight has allowed populations to climb, it has also made them pariahs among Western ranchers and some hunters, who chafe under protections enforced by “Washington bureaucrats,” as Burgum called federal wildlife managers.
Proponents of this week’s Interior Department announcement are quick to cite population increases in their insistence that grizzly bears are fully recovered and should be managed by state wildlife agencies. But environmental groups claim that census numbers are a misleading benchmark. Percentage of suitable habitat occupied by the great bears is a better barometer for recovery, they say.
“It is extremely concerning that the Trump administration is seeking to hand over more management of the species to hostile Northern Rockies states,” said Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office. “While we need to see the details of this proposal, it could put grizzly bears at greater risk at a time of record mortality for the species. Anti-science political maneuvers should not be allowed to thwart grizzly bear recovery. If this proposal will further harm the species, we are prepared to take the administration to court.”
But Montana Governor Greg Gianforte noted that surging grizzly bear populations should be read as evidence that the Endangered Species Act works and returning management to the states should be celebrated as a conservation success.
“With this success has come a challenge – bears have expanded into new areas and conflicts have increased with farmers, ranchers, recreationists, and residents,” said Gianforte at the Interior announcement south of Bozeman, Mont. “Returning management to the states is a welcome change and Montana is ready to lead to balance conservation and the safety of our communities.”
The Boone and Crockett Club’s Roosevelt says simply because management may shift from federal to state agencies, grizzly bear recovery isn’t finished.
Changes to the ESA in the 1990s failed to chart a coherent way forward for recovered species so they could stay out of federal protections.
“As a result, every attempt to de-list the bear has been challenged by tactical litigators who exploit this policy omission to overturn decisions based on sound science,” says Roosevelt. “This politicized maneuvering to keep the grizzly as a listed species in areas where it now thrives has the perverse effect of diverting necessary resources away from the more than 1,000 other species still rightly listed under the ESA.”
The USFWS grizzly bear rule modification can allow the bears to remain under federal protection in some ecosystems while shifting management to state agencies in other ecosystems.
The ‘Harm’ Question
Nearly concurrent with Burgum’s announcement regarding grizzly bear management, the Department of the Interior, along with the federal Department of Commerce, last week announced that it was dropping the word “harm” from the types of actions prohibited by the ESA. That single word is the foundation of the federal act’s power to ensure habitat is conserved for not only imperiled species but also non-federally protected wildlife.
By rescinding the regulatory definition of “harm,” the federal act can be returned “back to its
actual text and original intent, which will end years of federal overreach.”
Citing a 2024 Supreme Court case, “the Services determined that the prior definition of ‘harm’ was an unlawful regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights.”
But legal experts have stressed that the term underpins much of the ESA’s authority, allowing agencies to ensure that critical habitat isn’t impaired or to impose penalties when it is. Combined with the Trump administration’s rescission of the federal Roadless Rule and mandatory increases in logging in grizzly bear habitat, the rescission of the “harm” language could slow or turn back conservation gains that have been achieved under federal protection, bear advocates say.
“I think of this as a dress rehearsal for delisting,” said Christy Clark, director of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, after Burgum’s announcement, according to reporting by Montana Free Press.
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