Grizzly Debate: Bears off endangered list

As Reported in Newsweek - Newsweek Jan. 16, 2006 issue - When the Bush Administration recently announced its plan to remove Yellowstone's grizzly bears from the endangered-species list, some hailed the step as a success story. There were only 200 bears in the region in 1975 when they were first listed as threatened; now there are 600.

But critics say the delisting has less to do with the bear population than with the desire to resume drilling for oil, which was forbidden in Yellowstone under the Endangered Species Act. The administration has moved aggressively to open federal lands to drilling; the number of permits has tripled in recent years, to more than 7,000 in 2005, and the Bureau of Land Management expects that number to top 9,000 in 2006. "The unspoken issue here is that the Endangered Species Act damped down drilling efforts," says Tim Preso, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is threatening to sue to keep the bears on the list if they're taken off. (A ruling will come sometime after Feb. 17.) Chris Servheen, the national grizzly-recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service