Trump’s 2025 plans would be very bad for grizzly bears

Although former President Donald Trump has very publicly distanced himself from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025 plan, we should take seriously much of what the 920-page document tells us about a potential second Trump term. For one, if Trump wins in November, he may end federal protections for grizzly bears, gray wolves and the greater sage grouse, as the document proposes removing the three animals from the federal government’s list of endangered species. Unsurprisingly, a politically-motivated group making decisions about protected and endangered species has the potential to create a ripple effect of problems. As Andrea Zaccardi, a carnivore conservation legal director for the Center of Biological Diversity, points out, “The proponents of Project 2025 don’t understand that the protection of species is supposed to be a science-based decision and not a political one.” Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973, the Endangered Species Act allows the federal government to protect species at risk of extinction from being killed, harmed or harassed. Once the population has rebounded, the species can be delisted, which leaves protection in the hands of state governments that environmentalists argue would not take strong enough action. Delisting endangered species is supposed to be done when federal scientists think it is no longer necessary, but it’s not unheard of to become political as well. But by 1975, when they were officially listed as an endangered species, the number of grizzlies in the continental United States had dipped below 1,000. Since then, they’ve been a success story, with a particularly successful effort to reintroduce grizzlies in a portion of Montana and the three states around Yellowstone National Park — the two areas where Project 2025 calls for delisting them. Ivan London, a senior attorney at Mountain States Legal Foundation, said in an email that the grizzly bear should have never been listed under the Endangered Species Act in the first place. “Several ESA listings are based on outdated or otherwise questionable information, making the regulatory decisions to list or continue listing several species simply unreasonable. If the three species were delisted, the federal government would no longer have any say in protecting them. Mark Jones, national director for hunter outreach for Gun Owners of America, argues that the grizzly bear populations have rebounded enough that they should be delisted, and any effort to keep them on there is due to national politics interfering with the science. Jones, a Wyoming resident and a certified wildlife biologist, said that has “cheapened” the Endangered Species Act. “There’s a lot of resentment in Wyoming for the federal government because it’s ignoring its own law,” he said. She notes that Idaho and Wyoming already passed laws that would allow trophy hunting of grizzly bears if they are delisted, while there would be strong incentives for state lawmakers to allow more killing of grizzlies and gray wolves, which will sometimes attack cattle and sheep. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/project-2025-endangered-species-grizzly-bears-gray-wolves-rcna164898