As part of ongoing efforts to get federal protections removed from the region’s grizzly bears, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has approved a new agreement with the states of Montana and Idaho that lays out additional precautions they could take if the species is returned to state management. The updated memorandum of agreement — which the Wyoming commission unanimously passed on Tuesday — commits the states to a process that could include translocating bears into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to promote genetic diversity and sets limits on the number of bears killed by wildlife managers and hunters.

The step is one of several that the State of Wyoming is taking in its efforts to have the species delisted under the Endangered Species Act.

Since dropping to a low of around 136 bears in 1975, new estimates suggest that more than 1,000 grizzlies now live inside the species’ primary conservation area in and around Yellowstone National Park.

The new agreement allows for discretionary mortality of up to 10% of independent female grizzly bears and dependent young and 22% of independent males if the population is greater than 1,033 bears. Discretionary mortality refers to human-caused grizzly bear deaths over which agencies have discretionary authority — such as hunting and, more commonly, management removals of bears after conflicts with residents and livestock producers. If the population dips below 831 bears, hunting would be closed for the species, according to the memorandum. 

Prior to refining the estimates for the region’s population — which were overly conservative according to both federal and state officials — there were an estimated 750 grizzly bears inside the primary conservation area. Officials refuse to estimate the number of bears outside the boundaries of the area and do not count individuals that leave the suitable habitat in the estimate.

The agreement still needs to be approved by Idaho and Montana before Wyoming is able to file a delisting petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that Gov. Mark Gordon promised in September.

In a statement, Gordon called the approval of the new memorandum “a crucial step in Wyoming’s efforts to regain management of grizzly bears.”

“This approval reaffirms Wyoming’s vow and commitment to long-term grizzly bear conservation and underscores the fact that wildlife management is best placed in the hands of states, not the federal government,” he said.

A long battle

The states have been working to gain control of the management of the species for years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in 2007 that the population had recovered, but that attempt at delisting was thrown out by a federal court judge.

In the spring of 2016, the service tried again, filing a proposed rule to remove the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s grizzly bear population from the list of threatened and endangered species. Following the proposal, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission began working closely with Idaho and Montana to approve a tri-state agreement for the management of discretionary mortality of grizzly bears. When the service published a final delisting rule in 2017, Idaho and Wyoming immediately proposed a hunting season for the predators.

However, in the final hours before the season, the rule was nixed by a federal judge in Montana over several issues, including the need for connectivity to increase genetic diversity. 

In July 2020, a panel of three judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision regarding genetic health and the need for the service to commit to recalibration. It was this fall that Gordon announced Wyoming’s intent to file a new petition with the Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the Yellowstone grizzly bear population. 

In the petition, Wyoming intends to address the concerns raised by the courts, including genetic diversity. The new agreement would commit the three states to translocating at least two grizzly bears into the ecosystem in the next few years — although the effort could be avoided if diversity was found to be spreading naturally before then, said Dan Thompson, large carnivore section supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“We would do so by 2025 unless we, in the meantime, document a change naturally,” Thompson said in an interview after the commission vote. 

Every bear captured by the states goes through testing. If one is found to be from a different population — presumably from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem — the need for translocation of individual bears could be revisited. But if there is a need, only non-conflict bears would be transported into the region.

“The bigger issue is the notion of recalibration,” Thompson said.

Last year’s decision stated explicitly that the three states needed to commit to recalibrate population metrics and mortality limits if a new method for estimating the number of grizzlies in the region was implemented — and new estimates derived by refining Chao 2 calculations were instituted by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team last spring.

The study team estimates the current population inside the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem at about 1,069 bears, with a low guess of 953 bears and a high of 1,184. Population estimates are not kept outside the conservation zone, but grizzly bears euthanized outside the zone boundaries account for about a third of all lethal removals, according to Frank van Manen, leader of the study team. 

Despite the recent removals inside the DMA, van Manen has said data shows an increasing population in the ecosystem.

“If you look at the dependent yearling cubs, there are well over 300, and that indicates really solid recruitment into this population,” he said in April.

However, the population estimates are only one criteria being considered by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Following the science

At a Nov. 17 hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the service, Martha Williams, said she would look to “the science of the species” in determining whether to delist again — and she indicated there is more work to do.

Williams, currently the principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, is deeply familiar with the species. She served as legal counsel for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks from 1988 to 2011 and as director from 2017 to 2020; that included a stint as the chair of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee.

“I support the long-term recovery of grizzly bears, and very much appreciate the efforts and the leadership that Wyoming, for example, has put into that,” Williams said at the Senate committee hearing.

However, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., who raised the topic with the nominee, responded that “it’s been a long-term recovery and they are recovered.”

“Every single objective criteria has been met,” Lummis said of grizzly bears, “and then when the bar’s been raised before, that objective has been met and it’s been raised again — and that objective has been met.”

“So do you intend to demand additional requirements, or raising the bar again in future delisting?” the senator asked.

Williams responded by saying she would work to ensure that the Fish and Wildlife Service adheres to the Endangered Species Act and the underlying science. She noted that a species status assessment from the service — and past court decisions — have concluded that “there are still elements that we need to work through.”

Williams specifically mentioned adequate regulatory mechanisms, recalibration and genetic connectivity.

“While population numbers are robust in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, there are also [other] elements when listing and delisting species,” she said.

If the new memorandum of agreement is approved by Idaho and Montana, Wyoming officials can then file Gordon’s promised petition with the Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency will have 90 days to consider reviewing the bears’ status and 12 months from receipt of the petition to decide whether to recommend that oversight be returned to the states.