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Interior Moves to Hand Grizzly Management to the States Without Delisting
A proposed rule would give Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington day-to-day authority over roughly 2,000 bears that stay federally threatened.
The Interior Department announced a proposed rule on July 14 that would move day-to-day grizzly management to the four states where the bears live, while leaving them listed as threatened. The department framed it as recognition of recovery rather than a delisting, and the Secretary was explicit that responsibility, not status, is what moves.
The mechanism is a tiered system. How much decision-making and regulatory flexibility a state gets is tied to whether it has adopted conservation strategies and management plans and hit demographic objectives for the bears in its own country. Meet more of them, get more latitude.
This is the latest turn in a legal loop that has run for a decade. Wyoming, Montana and Idaho have petitioned for delisting repeatedly; two previous delistings were reversed in court. A settlement forced a final delisting decision, and that deadline now sits at the end of December.
The question most hunters will ask first is whether this opens a season. It does not, and not soon. The comment period on the rule closes September 15, and the separate delisting decision is still pending.
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