9th Circuit Rules that Greater Yellowstone Grizzlies to remain on Endangered Species List

In a ruling handed down yesterday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem should remain a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Circuit Judge Richard Tallman stated that federal wildlife biologists were wrong when they concluded that the decline of whitebark pine trees was not detrimental to the bears' future.

In an opinion filed yesterday, Judge Tallman states:

The Service's delisting decision, the subject of this appeal, raises a host of scientific, political, and philosophical questions regarding the complex relationship between grizzlies and people in the Yellowstone region. We emphasize at the outset that those are not the questions that we grapple with here. We, as judges, do not purport to resolve scientific uncertainties or ascertain policy preferences. We address only those issues we are expressly called upon to decide pertaining to the legality of the Service's delisting decision: first, whether the Service rationally supported its conclusion that a projected decline in whitebark pine, a key food source for the bears, does not threaten the Yellowstone grizzly population; and second, whether the Service rationally supported its conclusion that adequate regulatory mechanisms are in place to maintain a recovered Yellowstone grizzly population without the ESA's staunch protections.

As to the first issue, we affirm the district court's ruling that the Service failed to articulate a rational connection between the data in the record and its determination that whitebark pine declines were not a threat to the Yellowstone grizzly, given the lack of data indicating grizzly population stability in the face of such declines, and the substantial data indicating a direct correlation between whitebark pine seed availability and grizzly survival and reproduction. As to the second issue, we reverse the district court and hold that the Service's determination regarding the adequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms was reasonable.

You can read his full opinion here.



Jeff
Hiking in Glacier.com