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Feds: Grizzlies in More Danger After Delisting

Thursday, 08 October 2009 13:08

Yellowstone Grizzly

Federal officials are making a surprising argument in opposing the addition of Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears from the Endangered Species List: They say putting the grizzlies back on the list gives them less protection under the law.

The reasoning goes like this: by putting the bears back under protected status under a September ruiing, Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy wiped out safeguards enacted when the grizzlies were removed from the Endangered Species List in 2007, including protection for bear habitat and a prohibition on road construction. With those provisions wiped out, argued federal officials in court papers filed Monday, bears are now more vulnerable because they're protected.

Not sure we buy the arguments: those protections could be enacted separately without any linkage to the bears' placement on any endangered list. And we're not sure Malloy will buy the twisted logic, either.

RELATED STORIES: Grizzlies Back on Endangered List

Photo by John Good, courtesy National Park Service.

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