Residents concerned about proposed grizzly management rules that include killing on public lands

A public comment session on Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ administrative rules proposal for managing grizzly bears should the federal government delist them from Endangered Species Act protections in parts of the state showed there remain concerns from some in Montana about killing the bears – particularly on public lands.

The written public comment period for the proposed rules was open through 5 p.m. Monday, but on Friday, the Fish and Wildlife Commission took comments in a virtual meeting from more than a dozen people – many of them representatives of various conservation groups or citizens who said they would still like to see further changes to the proposal or for the commission to scrap it and start over.

The rulemaking process started in June after the Legislature passed Senate Bill 295, sponsored by Sen. Butch Gillespie, R-Ethridge, which requires the commission to set up a framework to manage grizzlies in the event they are delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is in the midst of a yearlong study to decide whether grizzlies should be delisted in the  Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) in western Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), which sits in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.