The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s former longtime grizzly bear recovery manager has written a new report that recommends against grizzly bear delisting and details how he believes the federal recovery plan he wrote in 1993 should be updated to treat grizzlies in the Northern Rockies as a single population and to include new research

Conservation groups filed a petition Wednesday, arguing U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service needs to consider new science in grizzly management

Instead of managing each of the populations separately, the groups are arguing for a strategy that combines the ecosystems into one large metapopulation, including the lands connecting the bears’ habitat.