Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, announced Tuesday, along with the governors of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to return more state management of the Yellowstone area grizzly bear, which has stubbornly remained on the endangered species list. 

The first thoughts that come to my mind: It’s about time, and this time let’s make sure it sticks. I think this may be a better way to do just that as this is not removing the bears from the endangered species list, but simply allowing for state instead of federal management while they remain on the list. 

Hopefully it’s a stepping stone to finally removing griz from the list. 

This population of grizzly bears was removed from the list twice — in 2007 by the Obama administration and in 2017 by the first Trump administration. But in both cases, a federal judge stymied the effort and had the bear returned to the list. 

There’s just plenty of evidence that the grizzly has recovered. Gov. Mark Gordon noted there are over 1,000 grizzlies in Wyoming alone, out of the roughly 2,000 or more in the population in the three states combined. I appreciate the analogy Gordon used:

“The endangered species list is not the dean's list,” he said. “It's time this bear graduates, it has excelled in its recovery.”

He said each time it’s been delisted the courts have put the bear “back on academic probation.”

But the success of the population has only skyrocketed since the last delisting, and it’s going to be harder to argue the species has not more than recovered sufficiently, although already many environmental groups have made those arguments. 

I wonder if the states take back management this way, necessarily without a hunting season as was planned in 2017 due to the bruins remaining on the ESA, if this could temper the fire from environmental groups. Hunting grizzlies is certainly a hot button issue in some circles, even though a season would likely kill far fewer of the bears than are already killed by Game and Fish personnel in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to management issues or are killed by vehicles or drown in canals. 

Still, while this isn’t delisting — yet — this is a good move. Wyoming has shown a great ability to manage the grizzly bear population, which desperately needs to be better managed as the bears range further out from  approved habitat due to the pressures of a growing population.