MISSOULA — Several federal grizzly bear plans, reports and decisions are imminent, but they might falter because federal agencies anticipate budget cutbacks and staffing changes under the Trump administration.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) employees updated the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly bear subcommittee earlier this week on upcoming decisions on grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, including the highly anticipated answer to delisting petitions from the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
USFWS grizzly bear recovery coordinator Hilary Cooley said the USFWS will release a proposal next month on the delisting of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, as required under a court settlement. The final rule is due in January 2026.
“It will either delist bears or revise what’s on the list,” Cooley said. “Because it’s going to be this comprehensive rule that affects the entire listing, at the same time, we’re going to put out the 12-month (final petition) findings for the (Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem) and the (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem). We will also publish a new status assessment. We updated the science and the data, and our decision will rely on that.”
Meetings to take public comment on the delisting proposal are planned for February in Missoula, Cody, Wyo., and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and an online meeting will also be scheduled.
Cooley said she anticipates that the court-ordered draft environmental impact statement on reintroduction of grizzlies to the Bitterroot ecosystem will be released in the summer. The final impact statement has to be published by October 2026.
The Bitterroot is one of two designated recovery areas without resident grizzly populations. In March 2023, Missoula federal district judge Donald Molloy sided with wildlife advocates who sued the USFWS for not acting on its original environmental impact statement and decision, made in 2000, to insert an experimental population of 25 grizzly bears in the Bitterroot recovery area and to provide bear-smart education to residents. New information — the recent presence of transient grizzlies in the Bitterroots — required the development of the new impact statement.
“We’ve identified a proposed action and that is natural recovery to the Bitterroot,” Cooley said. “We have to have alternatives, so one is reintroduction as a 10J experimental population, another is reintroduction as a threatened species without a 10J.”
The “10J” is a section of the Endangered Species Act that allows the USFWS to designate populations as experimental, which requires fewer protections. However, the lawsuit that led to the new environmental impact statement pointed out that 10J populations must be planted in areas where the species doesn’t exist, but grizzly bears have been documented in the Bitterroot Mountains. So choosing to designate a 10J population could violate the law.
The North Cascade Ecosystem in Washington state is the other recovery area without a resident grizzly population. In April, the USFWS finally issued an environmental impact statement and decision to reintroduce grizzly bears there with the help of North Cascades National Park.
Cooley said the agency would probably transplant bears from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Cascades. She noted that transplanting bears elsewhere is a loss from the source population. So it would put ticks in the mortality column for the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and that could affect management decisions if other sources of mortality are high.
Bears could also be transplanted from the Greater Yellowstone population or British Columbia, Canada. But the west side of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem has habitat similar to that of the Cascades, so the bears would be better adapted. British Columbia has more similar habitat, but arranging international wildlife transfers can be complicated, Cooley said.
“We’re not ruling that out - it depends on the timing. Are we talking next year or three years? Right now, we’re thinking the likelihood is NCDE would be best at first,” Cooley said. “We do not have a date or a budget to do that. But we are working on an implementation plan to get the logistics and permits ready to go, to sit on the shelf until we’re ready to do that.”
Finally, there’s a chance that fewer grizzly bears will die on railroad tracks within the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem if the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway can finalize its Habitat Conservation Plan, which has been about 20 years in the making.
For the USFWS to issue the railway an incidental take permit for the occasional collision, the company has to make a plan to better protect bears. But it’s taken so long that wildlife groups sued in December 2023 to force the company to finish the plan after trains killed three grizzlies last year.
USFWS field supervisor Amity Bass said the agency has reviewed the Habitat Conservation Plan and sent it back to the BNSF. Now, they’re just waiting on a budget proposal. The BNSF would have to pay mitigation money, which could help bear management specialists develop more preventative projects.
Subcommittee chair Lee Anderson, Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 1 supervisor, said he was glad the plan was maybe in the final stages.
“We’re engaged. We want to see it happen. We’ve had this opportunity to update the funds, ask for a couple things that we think are reasonable, that we really need to make this functional on the ground. Then it’s going to be up to them to either go for it or what. We’ll see what happens,” Anderson said.
Although a few grizzly plans may be falling into place, federal agencies may have trouble seeing them through. A number of representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service commented on concerns about anticipated budget cutbacks. Budget cutbacks don’t portend well for grizzly bear conservation.
Congress failed to approve a new federal budget by Sept. 30 for fiscal year 2025 and instead passed a continuing resolution to keep the current budget going until Dec. 20. When the new Congress returns in January, Republicans will have the majority in both houses.
“We’re planning for budget reductions,” Cooley said. “We’re expecting another continuing resolution and we’re planning for budget decreases.”
Scott Jackson, Forest Service Carnivore Program leader, said Region 1 was anticipating budget reductions too, so his staff was planning for different contingencies. He added that Lolo National Forest supervisor Carolyn Upton was retiring as of the end of the year, so a new supervisor would need to be hired.
Wednesday was the second day of the subcommittee’s winter meeting in Choteau.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
