Viewpoint: Grizzlies cannot survive on paper

Dave Stalling

It makes no sense to say we are protecting grizzly bears while allowing the landscapes they depend on to disappear.

A grizzly bear is not protected because its name appears on a federal list. It survives because it has wild rivers to follow, forests to den in, mountains to roam, and connected habitat where populations can move, breed, and recover.

Take away the habitat, and the protection becomes an empty promise.

That is why the Trump administration’s recent rewrite of a key provision of the Endangered Species Act should concern every American who cares about wildlife, public lands, and the future of our natural heritage.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries have changed how the federal government defines the word “harm” under the Endangered Species Act. For decades, the law recognized that destroying or degrading the habitat a threatened or endangered species depends on could itself be a form of harm. The new interpretation narrows that protection. The consequences could be profound.

The Endangered Species Act has long been based on a simple biological reality: species cannot survive without the places that sustain them. Habitat is not a side issue. Habitat is the foundation. For the grizzly bear, that foundation is disappearing piece by piece.

I have spent countless hours in some of the most remote country in the Lower 48. I have followed fresh grizzly tracks along river bottoms, watched bears moving across distant hillsides, and experienced the rare privilege of standing in landscapes where humans are not in control.

Those moments teach humility.
They remind us that wilderness is not empty land waiting for development. It is a living system shaped over thousands of years—a place where countless species evolved to survive.

The grizzly bear represents that wildness better than almost any animal in North America. It is a symbol of strength, resilience, and the remaining connection to a continent that was once far less divided by roads, fences, and development.

But symbols do not need habitat. Animals do.

Across the West, grizzly habitat is increasingly fragmented by roads, subdivisions, energy development, logging, and expanding human infrastructure. Populations that once moved across enormous landscapes are now separated into isolated pockets. That isolation is not just a conservation challenge. It is a threat to long-term survival.

Grizzlies need connected landscapes to maintain genetic diversity, establish new territories, find mates, adapt to environmental change, and sustain healthy populations. A bear population trapped on shrinking islands of habitat is a population with fewer options and a more uncertain future.

The solution is not complicated: Protect wildlife corridors. Preserve migration routes. Keep landscapes connected.

We cannot claim to support grizzly recovery while undermining the habitat that makes recovery possible.

For decades, federal wildlife protections recognized this fact. The Endangered Species Act’s prohibition against “harm” included significant habitat destruction because scientists understood that destroying the places a species relies on can be just as damaging as directly killing an animal.

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that understanding in 1995, recognizing that habitat modification could constitute harm under the law.

Now that interpretation has been rolled back.

The Trump administration’s change does not alter the biology of wildlife. It does not change what a grizzly bear needs to survive. It does not make a destroyed ecosystem any less essential.

If we destroy the forests where bears den, eliminate the valleys they use to move, or cut off the corridors connecting populations, we are harming grizzly bears.

That is not politics.
That is not ideology.
That is biology.
That is fact.

Around the world, habitat loss remains one of the leading causes of wildlife decline and extinction. No recovery plan can succeed if the landscapes necessary for survival continue to disappear.

A species cannot be protected while its home is being dismantled.

America has already transformed enormous portions of the natural world. We have dammed rivers, cleared forests, drained wetlands, mined mountains, paved highways, and built across landscapes that once belonged entirely to wildlife.

After taking so much from nature, is protecting the remaining connected habitat for one of North America’s greatest wild animals really too much to ask?

Is it unreasonable to preserve the corridors that allow wildlife to move?

Is it unreasonable to leave enough wild country for wild animals to continue living wild lives?

It is not.

Grizzly bears are not obstacles to progress. They are not inconveniences to be managed away. They are part of the natural heritage that makes this country unique.

If we allow short-term interests and political decisions to permanently fragment the landscapes that sustain grizzlies, we will lose something that no future funding, technology, or regret can restore.

Rebuilding a destroyed ecosystem is far more difficult than protecting one that still exists.

Future generations deserve the chance to stand on a mountain ridge, look across an intact Western landscape, and know that somewhere beyond the next valley, a grizzly bear still moves freely.

The Endangered Species Act was created around a principle science has repeatedly confirmed: protecting wildlife means protecting the habitat wildlife cannot live without.

A species cannot survive on paper. A law cannot replace a landscape. A promise cannot substitute for a forest.

Conservation without habitat protection is not conservation at all. It is surrender.

The grizzly bear deserves more than our admiration. It deserves our respect and commitment to protect the wild places that have always been its home.

And America’s wilderness deserves nothing less.