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Yellowstone grizzlies lose ESA protection |
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The Bush administration is removing Yellowstone grizzly bears from the endangered species list.
Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said today the final rule delisting the bear will be published in next week's Federal Register and will become effective in 30 days — about when the bears emerge from their winter hibernation.
FWS has been working for years to delist the grizzlies, whose population is up to 500 bears from a low of 136 when they were listed 30 years ago, the agency said.
Once off the list, the bears will be under a management plan the agency approved last week (Land Letter, March 15). Management will include "intensive monitoring" to make sure they do not dip below morality rate of 9 to 15 percent, according to agency biologists.
"From the point of view of the bears, they won't see much difference," said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for FWS.
Environmental groups have been split on the delisting decision. The National Wildlife Federation, which was invited to join agency biologists at the press conference announcing the delisting today, has applauded the move as one of the successes of the Endangered Species Act. But Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council say the delisting is premature.
A chief concern for those groups is the potential effects of climate change on the bear and one of its chief food sources, the whitebark pine tree. Federal scientists agree the tree has been in decline because of a beetle whose population has been growing with rising temperatures.
Federal biologists are monitoring the trees, Servheen said, but their decline does not pose an immediate risk for the bear. Grizzly bears have other food sources and will sometimes go for a year without eating pine cones, Servheen said.
The bears will come under a conservation plan developed by state and federal scientists. State mangers could eventually allow hunting of the bears, but Servheen said its current population would not allow for "more than a handful" of hunting permits, if any.
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