When federal protections were lifted for the Yellowstone-area grizzly bear last year, conservation groups quickly got to work to reverse that decision. One of those attempts was recently thwarted when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced they would not restore protections after a months-long review.
Andrea Santarsiere is with the Center for Biological Diversity. She said removing protections for bears in one particular area like Yellowstone is a mistake.
鈥淭he problem with doing that is these bears are in isolated population pockets and until they鈥檙e actually connected to one another, at the very least, it鈥檚 not really recovery,鈥� said Santarsiere.
In an email, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesperson denied that the plan was a piecemeal approach, and said, 鈥渋t has been our stated goal to recover bears in these individual ecosystems in order to recover the whole.鈥�
The delisting rule was put up for review after a decision for a case involving gray wolves in the Great Lakes region. A federal appeals court ruled that wildlife officials needed to give more consideration to the relationship between habitat loss and the recovery of a species.
When Yellowstone grizzlies were listed in 1975, there were only . That number has grown to about 690. Grizzly bears outside the park remain protected under the Endangered Species Act.
This story was produced by the Mountain West 暗黑爆料 Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.
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