U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to propose a delisting of grizzly bears in Montana

Buried in the Spring 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions report was a notice from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that the group plans to propose a delisting of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) population segment of grizzly bears in Montana by the end of September 2018. The release of the agenda happened on the same day as a regular meeting of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s subcommittee on the NCDE, held in Kalispell, MT. During that meeting, the subcommittee discussed new science reports and the conservation strategy being worked on in preparation for possible delisting. The announcement was not made at this meeting, according to Dillion Tabish, Education Program Manager of the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. He noted that the overlap of the USFWS announcement with the NCDE subcommittee meeting has been causing confusion. — WLJ