Posted: 05/04/2007
Grizzly Bear Removal From Endangered List Cause For Celebration
NCPA Scholar Says Delisting a Sign of Success
DALLAS (May 3, 2007) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is coming under attack from environmental activists for its decision to remove the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the list of endangered animals under protection from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Yet the government's decision should be viewed as cause for celebration, not concern, according to Brian Seasholes, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).
"Critics seem to have forgotten the ultimate purpose of the Endangered Species Act," said Seasholes. "The point of the act is to get species to the point where we can delist them, not to keep them as permanent wards of the state."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the grizzly bear on the endangered species list in 1975 based on an estimate that only 136 bears remained in the lower 48 states. Since then, the grizzly bear has become the most intensely studied bear population in the world. In the 1980's, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) was formed to manage bear mortality and habitat to then increase the bear population. The grizzly bear population has increased 4-7 percent annually since the 1990s, now citing more than 500 bears and counting. Approximately 10 percent of those bears are collared so they can continue to be tracked and protected. Seasholes also pointed out that despite the delisting, conservation efforts for the grizzly bear will continue.
Seasholes noted that this is not the first time activists have opposed the delisting of a species. For example, the delisting of the gray whale, the American peregrine falcon, gray wolf, as well as the soon-to-be-delisted bald eagle, have all been opposed.
"In all of these cases, opposition to delisting has been about using wildlife as means to control land and resource use, not to control the actual status of these species," said Seasholes. NCPA Senior Fellow, H. Sterling Burnett, notes that "The grizzly bear was a poster child used to pass the ESA in 1973, and advocates of the Act are sentimental and frightened to see such an effective public relations tool go. However, the act was not written to be a fundraising tool for environmentalists, but rather as a way to protect species - the bears are safe, they should be taken off of the list."