Daines proposes bill to delist Yellowstone grizzlies

Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines Thursday announced he will introduce a bill in Congress that would delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The ecosystem is a huge swath of land that encompasses Yellowstone National Park and about 20 million more acres in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

According to the National Park Service, the grizzly bear population increased from 136 in 1975 to a peak estimated population of 757 in 2014. The 2019 population estimate was 728 bears in the Greater Yellowstone.

Daines said in a video press release it is clear the grizzly bear population has recovered in the region.

“The science is very clear, the grizzly bear population has more than recovered in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” he said.

But the press release also included a video of a Bynum rancher raising concerns about grizzlies on his ranch. There’s just one problem with that — Bynum is north of Choteau — and part of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Daines's bill doesn’t attempt to delist that population grizzlies.

The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem is about 8 million acres along the Continental Divide. It contains a little more than 1,000 bears, including about 300 that live in Glacier National Park.

Federal courts have ruled that the grizzly bear can’t be delisted until there’s evidence of genetic connectivity between the two populations.

Also, other large swaths of public land, most notably the Selway-Bitterroot, and Cabinet-Yaak, still don’t have viable populations of grizzly bears, though they historically did.

This is not the first time lawmakers have tried to trump court rulings to delist a species. The gray wolf was delisted in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming legislatively as well.

Delisting grizzlies could open them to hunting. There hasn’t been a grizzly bear hunt in Montana since the early 1990s.