BOISE, ID — Attorney General Raúl Labrador submitted formal comments this week to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calling on the agency to delist grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act and warning that the current federal rule invites activist lawyers to hijack Idaho’s wildlife management at taxpayers’ expense.
The comments respond to a revised proposal the Trump Administration issued July 17, 2026, revising the Endangered Species Act’s “4d rule” governing grizzly bear protections in the Lower 48 states. That proposal followed a separate version the Biden Administration issued January 15, 2025, the week before leaving office, which Idaho criticized at the time. The Trump Administration undertook a fresh review of the rule before issuing its own proposal this summer. Labrador’s letter supports the Administration’s stated goal of cutting federal bureaucracy and expanding state flexibility, while identifying specific changes still needed in the July proposal to achieve that goal.
Separately, a broader rulemaking to revise the grizzly bear’s underlying ESA listing status remains in progress, under a court settlement between USFWS and Idaho with a December 2026 deadline. Labrador’s letter makes clear Idaho’s position that the bears should be delisted entirely.
“For the past five decades, Idaho has grown the grizzly bear population back to health through real investment and sacrifice from our state agencies and local communities. Now it’s time the federal government admitted that success instead of rewarding armchair critics and taxpayer-funded activist lawyers who want to run our state from a courtroom,” said Attorney General Labrador. “The science and the law both say these bears should be delisted. Until that happens, Idaho needs a rule that protects our hunters, trappers, and rural communities from being sued into submission by radical environmentalist groups.”
The letter also calls on USFWS to write clear, straightforward criteria into the rule and to honor the Constitution’s anti-commandeering doctrine, which prohibits the federal government from forcing states to police private conduct like hunting and trapping as a condition of avoiding ESA liability. As one example of the problem, Labrador’s letter points to a retired federal grizzly bear recovery coordinator who served as a peer reviewer on the underlying science while simultaneously working as a paid expert witness for Earthjustice, in litigation that sought to shut down wolf trapping across roughly half of Idaho.
Read our letter here.