House Natural Resources Committee advances bill to delist Grizzly bear from endangered species list

Last week, the House Natural Resources Committee approved bringing a bill that seeks to delist the grizzly bear of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem from the endangered species list.

“The grizzly bear was first listed as threatened in 1975, and the recovery goal has been about 500 bears,” said Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming and sponsor of the legislation. “We exceeded that in 1997. We have exceeded recovery goals for almost three decades.”

The bill is called the Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025, or H.R. 281, and is co-sponsored by Montana’s two Republican congressmen, Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, as well as Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, and Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minnesota.

The effort to delist the bears has been going on for decades, having its most recent significant moment in 2017. At that time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — which manages the endangered species list — removed the bear from the threatened list but a federal judge in Montana vacated the decision the following year.

The judge cited a lack of scientific evidence from the federal government and an “arbitrary and capricious” application of the threat analysis necessitated by the Endangered Species Act.

The current bill requires that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reinstate the 2017 ruling and exempt it from future judicial review.

“It is time for Congress to step forward,” said Hageman. “We do not need to do what courts do, which is ignore the science, ignore the history, ignore the purpose of the act, etc. We can step in and delist, and that’s what the purpose of this bill is.”

Next, it goes to the House floor, where it will be debated and potentially voted on. Should it succeed, it will go to the Senate for consideration.

What is that history?

The fight over the bears’ future has been a significant battle between conservationists and those that believe the ESA protections have worked wonders for the beloved American predator.

Among those who see the bear as a success story of the ESA are many western legislators who have been trying to delist the bear for decades, citing years of increased population growth.

Those folks see the bear as the ultimate success story for the entire effort of the endangered species list, too, while also being mindful of the threat that the animals pose to those recreating, ranchers and people who live near these “very dangerous animals,” as Hageman referred to them.

“If we’d let the Endangered Species Act work, where we listed the species when they were either threatened or endangered, but we delisted when they were recovered, I think you’d have a lot more buy-in to the Endangered Species Act and the benefit of protecting these species,” Hageman said.

Conservationists argue that the bears were never given a full chance to actually recover to a healthy population at all. More important, they believe that the bears are still at risk due to the overwhelming threats posed by changing climates and the encroachment of humans. Bears’ food sources have altered and many have been killed with cars and as a result of encounters, for instance.

“One thing you need to remember is that the state of Wyoming has been fighting to strip protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears since 1993, when the population was less than 500,” said Louisa Wilcox, the founder and editor of Grizzly Times and a longtime bear researcher and advocate.

Seen in the larger context of American history, a bear population of 500 is vanishingly small compared to what it once was.

Over 50,000 North American brown bears used to roam on a habitat that stretched from Mexico to Alaska, and from California across to Kansas. By 1903, just 2% of the bears were left, having been eradicated from California, Mexico and the Southwest. By 1973, there were only a few hundred left in the lower 48.

“In 60 years of European settlement in the West, we lost 90% of our grizzly bears,” said Wilcox.

“Put it this way: Grizzlies in 1800 ranged on 740,000 square miles across 16 states west of the 100th meridian,” wrote Christopher Ketcham in his book "This Land." “A century-and-a-half later they had a range of about 37,000 square miles in three states.”

In 1973, the Endangered Species Act was passed into law, in part as recognition of what happened to the country’s grizzly bear population. The act protects the wildlife itself and the environment in which it lives.

The stated purposes of the act “are to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.”

Two years later, the Department of the Interior established the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team to study and make recommendations about how to manage the remaining bear population. After two years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially placed the bear on the endangered species list.

Today, USFWS estimates suggest that there are approximately 2,000 grizzlies in America’s northwestern states, with less than 800 in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

Why now?

Delisting the bears today is a priority for Hageman because she said that, “we need to manage them.”

The bear already roams over 26,000 square miles of Wyoming, Hageman said, and now they are showing up outside that range, which is dangerous for the bears and for humans.

“We’re part of the natural environment. I’m constantly reminding people of that when they’re looking at NEPA or ESA or these various environmental regulations,” Hageman said. “Human beings are part of the natural environment. Our needs also need to be taken into consideration.”

In Wyoming, there are over 230 grizzly incidents a year, some causing serious injury and death.

“Keep in mind they are sleeping — they’re hibernating — for five to six months. So, you’re looking at almost two a day."

As for fears the bear populations will just plummet once protections are removed, Hageman said that is not something anyone should worry about.

“There’s always these dire predictions and parade of horribles, but they don’t happen because nobody is incentivized to take this population back to either a threatened or endangered status,” Hageman said.

“Wyoming has been a very strong and good partner in protecting the grizzly bear. There is no reason to believe that we would stop doing that now just because they are delisted.”

Wilcox, however, disagrees. She sees the history of the bear and communities of the West extending far past the 50-year anniversary of the ESA, one that does not bode well for the country’s beloved wildlife.

“In the ethos of state wildlife management in the West — this is the vestige of the old West — we have to clear the land to prosper and multiply. We have to kill carnivores. We have to tame the land,” Wilcox said. Efforts like delisting the grizzly are “the last bastion of manifest destiny.”