MISSOULA — In 1993, Christopher Servheen wrote the report that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service currently uses to manage grizzly bear recovery in the lower 48 states. After more than 30 years and retiring, he updated it.
Now the report is at the center of a new petition asking federal wildlife authorities to change their approach to grizzly bear management.
The petition, filed Wednesday on behalf of regional and national conservation organizations, comes about a month before FWS must decide the future of grizzly protections in Wyoming, and potentially the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and beyond.
The filing asks FWS to update the 1993 grizzly recovery plan based on new science and new threats that have come up in the intervening years.
The current plan was written by Servheen during his tenure as the agency’s grizzly bear recovery coordinator from 1981 to 2016. Now Servheen says the future of grizzly bears depends on FWS taking modern science into consideration.
“It's important to realize that recovery is more than just how many bears are out there,” Servheen said. “The grizzly bears in the Northern U.S. Rockies live in only 4% of their former range in the lower 48 states.”
In accordance with the 1993 plan, grizzlies are currently managed in five distinct recovery areas in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and eastern Washington. Servheen calls for FWS to instead manage grizzlies in the Northern Rockies as one.
“The 1993 recovery plan managed grizzly bears as separate island populations because at that time we didn't think we could ever even fill up the islands with bears. Today we see them actually trying to connect across the landscape. Grizzlies would be most secure as one large interconnected population, which is called a metapopulation, and essentially that would connect all of those four ecosystems in the Northern Rockies, along with the Bitterroot into one unified population,” Servheen said.
The 15 organizations behind the petition say it provides a path towards a healthy, resilient grizzly population by allowing bears, and their genetics, to move between populations. If adopted, they say it could bring funding and awareness to reduce human-bear conflicts, improve co-existence, and help grizzlies adapt to climate change as food sources and availability shift.
“Revising the plan as Dr. Servheen is proposing, it’s allowing us to finish the marathon,” said Max Hjortsberg with the Park County Environmental Council. “We don’t want to stop running the marathon at 24 miles and say that we finished it. We’re close but we still have a little ways to go.”
The petition comes after years of debate about grizzly bear protection status under the Endangered Species Act. Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho have all asked FWS to delist grizzlies, removing ESA protections, and let the states manage their own populations.
On Dec. 6 a federal judge ordered FWS to make a final decision about Wyoming’s petition to delist by Jan. 20, 2025.
