Urge your members of Congress to oppose the Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025

The grizzly bear is not only featured on Wilderness Watch’s logo, but is a quintessential symbol of Wilderness and wildness—especially where the Great Bear still roams.

Grizzly bears were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1975 after being pushed nearly to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states. While progress has been made over the past 50 years to recover grizzly bear populations, with only about 2,000 grizzlies in the lower 48 and less than 4 percent of their historic range occupied, removing federal grizzly bear protections now would be ecological sabotage.

Earlier this year, Republican members of Congress with a long history of anti-wildlife and anti-wilderness actions, introduced the Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025 (H.R. 281 / S. 316). The Act would force the Interior Secretary to reissue a 2017 rule that removed ESA protections for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). That rule was struck down by multiple federal courts for failing to properly assess threats to the grizzlies' long-term survival.

Please speak up for grizzly bears by urging your members of Congress to oppose the Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025.

Grizzly bears are one of the slowest reproducing land mammals in North America, and removing federal ESA protections opens the door for a trophy hunt that would put grizzlies back on the path toward extinction. In fact, even as grizzly bears remain protected by the ESA, the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana have already developed plans for grizzly bear trophy hunting, including within Wilderness.

The Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025 would also bypass all current environmental and legal safeguards, stating that the reissued rule must be implemented “without regard to any other provision of law,” meaning it ignores requirements under the ESA, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other federal statutes that normally govern wildlife decisions.

The Act also would explicitly bar federal courts from reviewing the decision to delist grizzly bears in the GYE—a significant break from precedent and a threat to the checks and balances that ensure U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decisions are scientifically sound and legally defensible.

Removing ESA protections for grizzly bears in the GYE isn’t about science-based “management,” it’s about systemically eradicating grizzly bears from wildlands and Wilderness to clear the way for more logging, livestock grazing, road building, and development.

The Great Bear needs you!