The Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 12:00 am
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday that is will give the public more time to comment on the agency's proposal to lift special protections for grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park.
The comment period, which was to have expired Wednesday, now will run through March 20, the agency said in a news release.
Chris Servheen, Fish and Wildlife's grizzly bear recovery coordinator in Missoula, said it's not unusual to allow more time for comment. He said the agency received several requests for extensions - some people wanted more time because they said the proposal was too complex or released too close to the holidays - and that it wanted to be responsive.
So far, the agency has received more than 120,000 comments, many of those e-mail form letters, he said.
"It's not a vote, anyway," Servheen said in a phone interview. "We care about the substantive issues people bring up to make sure we have addressed the substantive issues of the proposal."
Last fall, Fish and Wildlife declared the Yellowstone-area grizzlies recovered and proposed removing them from protections under the Endangered Species Act. The agency says the bear population has grown from 4 percent to 7 percent a year since the mid-'90s and that more than 600 grizzlies now live in that region.
Some environmentalists worry that not enough has been done, or is yet known, to ensure a thriving population if protections were lifted.
Janet Barwick, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, welcomed the extension, saying there are several highly technical documents related to the proposal that need to be examined to produce "thoughtful and substantive" comments.