The Fish and Wildlife Service has again postponed a politically sensitive decision on whether to remove grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protections, even as the agency indicated it could change at least some bears’ ESA status.
In a court filing, a top agency official advised a federal judge Friday that a decision on whether to remove the Yellowstone-area grizzly bear population’s threatened status will now come out by Jan. 31, 2025. This is a six-month delay in a decision previously expected by Wednesday.
FWS officials attribute this latest delay to a need to coordinate several potentially intertwined grizzly bear decisions.
“Service staff are … preparing a draft of a proposed rule that revises or removes the entire ESA listing of grizzly bears in the lower-48 states,” Matt Hogan, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mountain-Prairie Region, wrote in the five-page declaration filed in federal district court in Wyoming.
