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The Congressional delisting trend began with Tester • Daily Montanan [1]
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Date: 2025-07-18
The Committee on Natural Resources in the U.S. House of Representatives just voted to delist grizzly bears by Congressional fiat — and prohibit judicial review — following a horrific precedent set by none other than Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester back in 2011.
By doing so, Congress overrides the role of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to weigh the best scientific evidence and determine which species should be given protection under the Endangered Species Act and which species are sufficiently recovered to be delisted from those protections.
As reported, some 50 conservation organizations signed on to a letter urging the committee to continue protections for grizzlies due to, among other things, the fear of permanent genetic damage by inbreeding in isolated populations. Many also fear state control of grizzlies will mimic “management” of wolves by Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana whose various regulations now include night hunting, thermal scopes, and even shooting cubs in their dens — all of which violate the “fair chase ethic” of hunting.
Make no mistake: The concerns that state management of grizzlies would likely follow the same path as that of wolves is valid. Yet many of these same conservation organizations said nothing when Tester delisted wolves by Congressional fiat in 2011.
The ugly truth is that although many of the big conservation organizations, such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Sierra Club, claimed to be advocates for wolf recovery, they sold out their convictions for one reason – to help get Tester re-elected.
Mind you, it’s illegal for non-profit organizations to engage in electoral politics and campaigns. Yet, not only did they ignore the law, they undercut their supposed mission to fully restore wolves to the Northern Rockies.
And so it was that Tester broke one of his main campaign promises — which was to not use “riders” to pass legislation — and, with his Idaho counterparts, slapped a wolf delisting rider on an unrelated defense spending bill. And just like that, wolves were no longer protected but were open to hunting, trapping, and now a panoply of ever more cruel, unethical and lethal methods of extermination.
Suffice it to say Tester basically told the conservationists who had helped propel him to the Senate six years earlier that he had to delist wolves to bolster his campaign for re-election in 2012. And of course, fearing that he might be replaced by a Republican, those phony conservationists refused to criticize the horrific precedent of abandoning science for electoral expediency.
Of course, such actions have repercussions. Now, as Chronic Wasting Disease spreads throughout Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, in the natural order of things it would be wolves that kill and consume the sick deer and elk. That’s what wolves do, after all, they wean the old, weak, and sick animals, leaving the healthier, stronger members to reproduce and benefit the herd’s overall health. Grizzlies perform much the same function. But now, like the wolves, they face an uncertain future of extermination for the crime of simply being grizzly bears.
It’s beyond ironic that these same conservation organizations are up in arms because a Republican has legislation to delist grizzlies when they were complicit in doing exactly the same thing with wolves — only by Democrat Tester.
And now, as often happens, the unintended consequences of their politically motivated silence comes back around. They got Tester re-elected alright. But the precedent of Congressionally delisting endangered species — that they helped him set — is now likely to wreak havoc on recovering grizzly bears.
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