By Venator staff
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to hand day-to-day grizzly bear management back to Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Washington while keeping the bears classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It is a real shift — but it is narrower than a lot of the headlines suggest, and it is emphatically not the opening of a grizzly hunting season. Here is what the rule does, what it does not do, and what it means for those of us who share bear country.
What was actually proposed
On July 17, 2026, the Interior Department and Fish and Wildlife Service published a revised 4(d) rule for the grizzly in the Federal Register. A 4(d) rule is a specific tool under the Endangered Species Act: it lets the federal government keep a species listed as threatened while tailoring the protections and delegating much of the on-the-ground management to states. The bears stay federally protected. Federal oversight does not disappear. What changes is who runs the day-to-day work of monitoring, conflict response, and management decisions.
The proposal covers roughly 2,000 grizzlies across the four states, with about half of them in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and most of the rest around the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem near Glacier National Park. Both of those core populations are widely described by wildlife managers as at or near their recovery targets — Greater Yellowstone first hit its benchmark of about 500 animals back in 2003.
A two-tier handoff, not a switch that flips
As reported by Montana Free Press and others, the revised rule sets up a tiered structure rather than an all-at-once transfer:
- Tier 1 — where a state has a memorandum of understanding in place but the population is still building, existing protections stay largely as they are.
- Tier 2 — once a population meets its recovery criteria, the state assumes much broader authority over routine, day-to-day management.
Even in Tier 2, the bears remain listed. That is the detail most likely to get lost in the noise, so it is worth stating plainly.
Why delisting and a hunting season are three different things
Three ideas keep getting mashed together in conversation. They are separate, and the distinctions matter:
- Management handoff (this rule). States take the lead on conflicts and monitoring while the bear stays listed as threatened. This is what is on the table now.
- Delisting. Removing the grizzly from the threatened list entirely. That is a separate legal action, on a separate track, and it has repeatedly bounced between agencies and courts for years.
- A hunting season. A regulated harvest set by a state agency. That can only follow delisting — and even then it is a distinct decision each state would have to make.
On the hunting question specifically, the governors involved have said flatly that under this 4(d) rule states would not have the authority to establish grizzly hunting seasons. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said the rule “would not permit a hunt in Montana,” and Montana carries a five-year moratorium on hunting after any delisting regardless. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the whole move the same way: “We’re moving responsibility back to the states, not delisting, but moving responsibility back to the states because of the great recovery.”
Some state officials clearly want to go further. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon put it bluntly: “The endangered species list is not a dean’s list. It’s time that this bear graduates.” But wanting delisting and having it are not the same thing, and this rule does not deliver it.
The other side of the argument
Conservation groups oppose the handoff, and their objection is worth understanding rather than dismissing. Greg LeDonne of the Western Watersheds Project called the decision one made “for political reasons” and “not based on science.” Critics point to a continued lack of habitat connectivity between the separate grizzly populations, ongoing habitat loss, and what they describe as record grizzly mortalities in 2025. (We have not independently confirmed a specific 2025 mortality figure; treat that number as a claim from opponents until official agency data is published.) Many of these groups also read state management as the first step toward eventual delisting and, down the road, hunting — which is exactly why the fight over this intermediate step is so sharp.
What happens next — and the December deadline
This is all unfolding under a court clock. U.S. District Judge David C. Nye set a deadline of December 18, 2026 for the Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize a rule that either revises or removes the grizzly’s listing across the lower 48. That deadline traces back to a proposed rule first issued in January 2025 and an extension the judge granted in early 2026.
The comment window has closed. The revised 4(d) provisions carried a 30-day public comment period that ran from the July 17 Federal Register publication into mid-August 2026, and tens of thousands of comments had been filed by late July. That record now sits with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has until December 18 to produce a final rule. There is nothing further for the public to file on this particular proposal — the next opportunity to weigh in comes if and when a delisting rule is proposed separately.
Whatever the final rule says in December, litigation is close to certain. Grizzly policy has lived in the courts for years, and nothing about this round suggests that pattern is over — previous delisting attempts in 2007 and 2017 were both overturned judicially. It is part of a broader reshuffling of federal hunting rules this year, which we covered in our look at the proposed expansion of hunting and fishing on federal lands — a proposal that has since been finalised, and which we followed up on in what actually opened six months after Order 3447.
For those of us who hunt grizzly country
Policy aside, if you chase elk, deer, or anything else across the Northern Rockies, the practical picture on the ground has not changed: you are hunting where grizzlies live, their range is expanding, and the responsibility to hunt smart is entirely on you. A management handoff does not make a bear less dangerous. A few things worth keeping sharp:
Carry bear spray — and actually know how to use it
Independent field research has repeatedly found EPA-registered bear spray to be highly effective at stopping aggressive encounters. But it only works if it is on your body and reachable in a second — a hip or chest holster, not buried in a pack. Practice pulling and firing an inert canister until it is muscle memory, mind the wind, and replace expired cans. Know your state’s rules for carrying a firearm and spray together.
Glass ahead — distance is your best safety tool
The single biggest driver of grizzly maulings is the surprise close encounter. The fix is to see the bear before it sees you. Good optics let you pick a sow with cubs out of a berry patch or spot a bear on a carcass from a ridge away, so you can route around it instead of stumbling into it. Binoculars on a tripod do most of that work — a steady 10x sorts a bear out of shadow far better than a shaky handheld 15x, and steadiness matters more than magnification here. One thing we will not paper over: Venator does not stock spotting scopes, in any magnification. If your country is open enough that you want one to identify a distant brown spot before you commit to a route, buy it from a dedicated optics retailer, because there is nothing in our lineup that stands in for a true spotter. What we do carry on the optics side lives in our Hunting Scopes collection, and our 2026 hunting optics guide walks through choosing binoculars and rangefinders that earn their weight.
Manage meat and scent like the stakes are real
- Field-dress and pack out game quickly. A gut pile or a cached carcass is a magnet, and a grizzly will readily claim a kill as its own.
- Approach any downed or cached animal with the wind in your favor, glassing and making noise as you close — assume a bear may already be on it.
- Store food and game in bear-resistant containers or hang it well away from camp. A hauler with good compression and load control makes it far easier to get quarters out in one efficient trip; if you need one, the backcountry packs and bags collection is a sensible place to start, and our DIY elk reality check covers pack-out math and warm-weather meat care in detail.
Move like you are in bear country, because you are
Make noise in thick timber and near running water, be extra alert at dawn and dusk, and think twice about still-hunting silently through dense cover in a known bear area. If you do meet a grizzly, do not run — back away slowly, keep your spray up, and give it room.
What a returning hunter should watch for
As states take on more authority, expect the rules to live at the state level and to keep changing. Watch your state agency’s regulations for updated conflict-management and carcass-handling guidance, possible bear-identification or awareness requirements in some units, and evolving carry rules — our roundup of this season’s regulation shakeups is a reminder of how fast that page turns. And do not let “management is going back to the states” get mentally rounded up to “there’s a grizzly season.” There is not. If that ever changes, it will come through delisting and a separate, formal season-setting process — not this rule. Heading out of state to hunt this country? Run our out-of-state hunt packing checklist before you load up.
The honest summary
Grizzly management is inching back toward the states. The recovery numbers behind that move are real. The bears stay federally listed, a legal hunting season has not been authorized, the comment window has closed, and the whole thing still has to clear a December 18 deadline and the litigation that will almost certainly follow. We will report the final rule when it lands — and we will tell you plainly if and when anything actually changes on the hunting question, without the spin you will get from either end.
Sources: revised 4(d) rule published in the Federal Register July 17, 2026 (docket 2026-14450); U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Department quotes as reported by KUER, Montana Free Press, and WyoFile; December 18, 2026 finalization deadline set by U.S. District Judge David C. Nye, per Mountain Journal and WyoFile. Last verified 2 September 2026.