THE Bush Administration will announce plans this week to remove the grizzly bear from the endangered species list, provoking a furious response from conservation groups.

The White House is backing a plan to remove the protected status of the bears in areas surrounding the Yellowstone National Park because their numbers have gone up spectacularly in the 30 years since they were listed. If adopted, the plan could lead to the reintroduction of grizzly hunting across 2.4 million hectares (6 million acres) of wild and spectacular land in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

The grizzly, or Ursus horribilis, is one of America’s most fabled animals, and once roamed unchecked from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean.

By 1975, however, after hunting and the destruction of much of their habitat because of human expansion, only 200 grizzlies survived in the greater Yellowstone area.

Today, after one of the greatest accomplishments of the Endangered Species Act, more than 600 grizzlies live in the greater Yellowstone region.

The population is growing at between 4 per cent and 7 per cent a year. Many scientists, and the US Fish & Wildlife Service, believe that Yellowstone holds as many bears as its landscape can support.

Grizzlies have also begun roaming well beyond the park’s borders, killing cattle, angering ranchers and triggering alarming face-to-face encounters with householders, whose rubbish bins are a welcome food source for the bear.

Under the Bush Administration plan, bears outside Yellowstone Park will no longer have federal protection.

Instead, the three states will assume responsibility for their management, gaining far greater flexibility to open the areas for bear hunters.

Already, in the past two years, 21 grizzlies have been illegally killed in northwest Montana alone.

Bears inside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks will remain protected.

The Sierra Club, a conservation group, and the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) both claim that the end of federal protection will leave the grizzly vulnerable to habitat loss and persecution.

They also say the plan is aimed at opening the way for oil and gas drilling, development and logging in the area.

“Federal protection is the only reason these bears exist in Yellowstone today, and they aren’t ready to survive without it,” Louisa Willcox, director of the NRDC’s wild bears project, said. “Delisting the Yellowstone bear prematurely would drive it back to the brink of extinction.” She added: “It would open their habitat to oil and gas drilling and would allow hunters to kill bears that roam outside the park.”

Lance Craighead, a bear biologist, said that many bears already live in areas outside the national parks. He said: “Development there has been restricted because of the bear’s status. But once it’s off, then the Bush Administration has nothing to slow down oil and gas development and timber harvest in those areas.”

But the National Wildlife Federation, the biggest environmental organisation in the US, supports the plan. It says that the bear numbers threaten landscape, livestock and people.

Tom France, the NWF director in the Rockies region, said that there are many safeguards under the plan. If the grizzly population drops below 500, for example, the bear would be relisted as endangered. Strict annual quotas for hunters would be set.

BACK FROM BRINK

White rhino By the end of the 19th century there were only 50 in Africa. There are now 11,500, protected by reserves

African elephant Ivory poaching devastated the population between 1979 and 1989. Today there are 600,000

Grey wolf Persecuted ferociously in the 19th century. Today there are up to 18,000 in Europe

Polar bear Numbers fell below 10,000, but the control of hunting has enabled them to reach 40,000

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