A federal court in San Francisco has rejected the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to delist the grizzly bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Free market environmentalists had argued that the grizzlies in three states around Yellowstone National Park had made a substantial recovery, and control should be returned to the states. From The Hill:
“A three-judge panel agreed with a prior ruling that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) acted contrary to the best available science in its determination that grizzly bears near the park would no longer be listed as a threatened species.”
Read an analysis by Jonathan Wood of PERC after the May 2020 hearing:
“After decades of work by federal biologists, state wildlife agencies, landowners, and conservation groups, the grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone have experienced an impressive recovery. From less than 150 bears a half-century ago to more than 700 today, the population has likely reached the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, causing bears to roam into new areas and perhaps soon to reconnect with other populations.
Because of the bear’s sustained improvement, successive administrations have sought to declare it recovered, remove the population’s status as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and return management to the states. As often occurs under the statute, those attempts have been litigated. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard a challenge to the 2017 delisting, which was overturned by a federal trial court in 2018.”