The bill orders the Secretary of the Interior to reissue the 2017 final rule that would remove the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population of grizzly bears from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife, and requires the department to do so within 180 days of enactment. It instructs the agency to ignore other legal constraints while reissuing that rule and removes judicial review of the reissuance.
This is significant because it bypasses ordinary administrative procedures and judicial oversight that normally govern delisting decisions. The result would be a statutory pathway to delisting that transfers day-to-day regulatory authority away from the Endangered Species Act’s federal protections and places responsibility for on-the-ground management primarily with state authorities and other non-federal actors.
At a Glance
What It Does
The statute directs DOI to republish a specific final rule (82 Fed. Reg. 30502, June 30, 2017) that delisted the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population and sets a 180-day deadline for that action. It also strips any court of jurisdiction to review the reissued rule.
Who It Affects
Federal fish and wildlife officials, state wildlife agencies that manage grizzly habitat across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, conservation NGOs that litigate ESA decisions, and local industries and communities that interact with bear habitat.
Why It Matters
By forcing a reissuance and barring judicial review, the bill changes the balance between federal science-based process, judicial oversight, and state-led management. Professionals in conservation, land use, and natural-resource compliance need to reassess permitting, monitoring, and conflict-mitigation responsibilities under a delisted regime.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The bill references one specific administrative action: the 2017 final rule that removed the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly from the federal endangered and threatened list. Rather than directing a new review, Congress commands the Interior Department to republish that exact rule and do so within a set 180-day window.
The instruction to 'reissue' targets the administrative act of promulgating the delisting rule, not a broader policy rewrite.
Importantly, the statute instructs the department to proceed without regard to other law and then removes judicial review of the reissuance. Practically, that language is intended to prevent opponents from using statutes like the Administrative Procedure Act or environmental-review requirements to delay or block the delisting.
The combined effect is procedural acceleration: the department is told to carry out a pre-specified delisting outcome on a compressed timetable with limited external checks.The operational consequences follow from delisting itself. Once the population is off the federal list, core ESA prohibitions and Section 7 consultation requirements no longer attach to actions affecting the grizzly population.
That shifts responsibility for population monitoring, conflict reduction, and reintroduction or protective measures toward state agencies and other actors; the bill, however, does not appropriate funds or set mandatory state obligations for post-delisting monitoring or response.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to reissue the 2017 final rule removing the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly population (82 Fed. Reg. 30502) within 180 days of enactment.
It directs the department to proceed 'without regard to any other provision of law,' removing standard procedural requirements that normally apply to rulemaking.
The statute expressly eliminates judicial review of the reissuance, blocking federal courts from hearing challenges to that action.
The bill is geographically limited to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population of grizzly bears rather than affecting the species uniformly across its historic range.
The text contains no funding provisions or new federal-state agreements; it commands an administrative outcome but leaves implementation, monitoring, and on-the-ground management responsibilities undefined.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title
Gives the bill its public name: the "Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2025." This is a formal label that signals the legislative intent to reallocate responsibility for the specified grizzly population, but it carries no operative legal force beyond naming.
Mandatory reissuance of 2017 delisting rule
Directs the Secretary of the Interior to reissue a single, identified Federal Register rule (82 Fed. Reg. 30502) that removes the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly population from the Federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife. The provision fixes a concrete timeline—180 days—so the agency must complete the administrative act of republishing that rule within that period. Because the bill points to a specific prior final rule, the department’s discretion is narrowly framed: the action called for is republishing that rule rather than conducting a new open-ended biological or procedural review.
Bar on judicial review
Provides that the reissuance and the statutory section itself are not subject to judicial review. Practically, that denies courts the usual avenue to evaluate whether the agency followed required procedures or correctly applied the law. That prohibition is broader than most carve-outs and removes a key institutional check on administrative action, placing finality for this matter in the political branches rather than the judiciary.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Environment across all five countries.
Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State wildlife agencies in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho — they gain primary management authority over grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, increasing their discretion over hunting, relocation, and conflict mitigation strategies.
- Local ranchers, landowners, and certain recreation and extractive businesses — delisting reduces ESA-related federal restrictions that can limit land use and could simplify permitting and operations near grizzly habitat.
- Pro-delisting advocacy groups and some congressional proponents — they achieve a durable policy outcome by combining an administrative command with a judicial-review bar, making reversal more difficult through ordinary litigation.
- Hunters and wildlife-management stakeholders who favor state-regulated harvest — removing federal protections opens the path for state-implemented hunting seasons or management removals under state rules where state policy allows it.
Who Bears the Cost
- Conservation and environmental organizations — they lose the standard legal avenue to challenge the administrative action and will have a narrower set of tools to contest the delisting in court.
- The Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — the agency must comply with a fixed timeline and perform a mandated administrative task while being cut off from procedural defenses usually available in litigation; it also carries the political and operational burden of implementing a controversial outcome.
- Federal courts and the judiciary generally — the bill removes their oversight role for this specific action, limiting judicial review that would normally check administrative compliance with law.
- Local communities and tribes concerned about long-term conservation outcomes — they face increased uncertainty because the bill does not create funding or mandatory monitoring commitments, shifting costs and responsibilities for human-bear conflict management to state and local budgets.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between finalizing a politically desired outcome quickly—placing management responsibility with states and reducing federal constraints—and preserving the checks, scientific review, and judicial oversight that protect species and ensure decisions rest on current data; the bill resolves that tension by prioritizing immediacy and political control over procedural safeguards and adaptive scientific governance.
The bill creates sharp implementation ambiguities by commanding a specified administrative outcome while declining to fund or define the post-delisting regime. Ordering the reissuance of a prior final rule narrows agency discretion but does not answer practical follow-up questions: who pays for monitoring, which state rules will apply, and how triggers for relisting (if population declines) will operate in practice.
Those omissions mean the delisting could accelerate regulatory change without a settled enforcement or monitoring framework.
The statutory waiver of 'any other provision of law' and the categorical ban on judicial review are legally aggressive tools that raise separation-of-powers and due-process questions. Removing judicial oversight eliminates routine procedural protections—notice-and-comment, environmental review, and APA challenge—that often shape the factual record supporting administrative decisions.
That creates a risk that the reissuance will be viewed as Congress substituting a political remedy for the administrative and scientific process, which could prompt constitutional litigation or broader institutional pushback even if ordinary judicial review is barred.
Finally, the statute’s reliance on a single historic Federal Register citation embeds the content of the 2017 rule (including any post-delisting monitoring plan it contained) but leaves uncertainty about whether modernized science, current population data, or changed on-the-ground conditions will be incorporated. Practically, managers and stakeholders will need to interpret how a legally compelled delisting interacts with real-time wildlife health indicators, cross-boundary habitat changes, and the practical needs of coexistence programs.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.