Yellowstone griz delisting proposal clears key Congressional hurdle

A proposal by a Wyoming Republican representative to remove Endangered Species Act protections from Yellowstone grizzly bears narrowly cleared a key congressional vote Tuesday.

The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources voted 20-19 to advance a bill that would reinstate a 2017 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delist — or remove federal protections — from grizzly bears. Language in the bill also seeks to make the action immune to a court challenge.

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican who represents Wyoming’s statewide U.S. House district, is sponsoring the Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025. Montana congressmen Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke, both Republicans, are co-sponsors.

During committee debate on the proposal Tuesday, Hageman argued that Yellowstone grizzlies, which have been protected under the ESA for five decades, met the initial recovery target of 500 bears nearly 30 years ago. 

“In my state, they are saturated, they far exceed recovery goals and it is time to delist them,” she said. 

Rep. Jared Huffman, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, argued that some of the states that would assume management of the bears “have not demonstrated a credible commitment to continuing the conservation of the species.”

“That’s why the former Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent me a letter to Montana legislators warning that state laws and regulations threaten both grizzly bear recovery and public safety,” Huffman said. “With these anti-predator laws in place, the grizzly could once again vanish from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”

Hageman said there are typically more than 200 conflicts with grizzly bears reported each year in Wyoming, and approximately 200 grizzlies are born in the Greater Yellowstone annually — “so the hyperbolic claims that they’re going to, poof, disappear [are] absolutely inaccurate.”

Committee chair Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Arkansas, called grizzly bear recovery a success for the endangered species program. He argued that Hageman’s proposal “accomplishes something that we should be doing more often — and that is celebrating listed species’ recovery through delisting.”

“Since Congress first enacted the Endangered Species Act in 1973, only 3% of listed species have ever been classified as recovered and delisted. We can clearly see the success of the grizzly in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and now it is time to listen to local communities and delist the species, returning management to the state,” Westerman continued.

Zinke, who represents Montana’s western congressional district, issued the 2017 rule to delist grizzly bears that the bill seeks to revive while he was serving as the Secretary of the Interior.

“Instead of moving the goal line, we should be celebrating the win — the Endangered [Species] Act worked for grizzly bears in the GYE,” Zinke said in a February statement regarding his co-sponsorship of the bill. “As a Congressman, I am demanding the same thing I did as Secretary — If we are managing based on science, there must be an offramp for wildlife on the list once their goal is reached. Montana and Wyoming share more than a border, we share wildlife, ecosystems, and the shared responsibility to manage it properly.”

Ahead of the hearing on the bill, H.R. 281, more than 50 organizations, primarily wildlife groups, urged Congress to kill the bill. The groups argued that the bruins inhabit less than 2% of their historical range and expressed concerns about “the geographic and genetic isolation of [existing] populations, the threat of increased human-induced mortality through hunting or predator control …  and the effects of delisting particular populations on grizzly bears in the rest of the Lower 48 states.”

In an emailed statement, Earthjustice attorney Jenny Harbine said policymakers shouldn’t lose sight of the larger history at play.

“It’s easy to forget that grizzly bears were almost entirely eliminated from the American West — it’s only because of concerted conservation efforts under the Endangered Species Act that grizzlies still inhabit the Northern Rockies. We shouldn’t squander that progress by turning grizzlies over to the same types of hostile state policies that were responsible for their near-eradication in the first place.”

Chris Servheen, a biologist who led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s grizzly bear recovery program for nearly 35 years, said in a written statement that President Donald Trump is jeopardizing much of the progress that his former employer made on grizzly recovery. The result, he said, will be “immediate declines in numbers and range.”

“The current administration and Congress are working to defund grizzly bear science and monitoring, dramatically reduce funding for federal land management agencies in grizzly range, increase timber harvest and road building in grizzly habitat, and weaken or eliminate the fundamental laws that grizzly recover depends on like the ESA, the National Environmental Policy Act and the United States Forest Service Roadless Rule,” he said. “At the same time, recreation pressure on public lands and private land development are accelerating rapidly in grizzly habitat putting even more stress on grizzlies.”

The committee’s vote comes six months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, then administered by Democratic President Joe Biden, rejected delisting petitions forwarded by Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

Hageman’s proposal narrowly passed the committee along party lines. All 19 of the committee’s Democratic members present opposed H.R. 281. For several minutes Tuesday, the Republican tally of no votes held steady at 19, but Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, eventually reported to the committee to register his support for the bill. A vote before the full House hadn’t been scheduled as of July 16.