HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Yellowstone National Park is launching a new program to capture and quarantine wild bison with the goal of establishing new, disease-free herds across the nation, park officials said Tuesday.

The program aims to help the conservation of the species by relocating wild Yellowstone bison to “suitable public and tribal lands” after they pass rigorous testing for disease, according to the National Park Service’s decision.

It also would cut down the number of bison that are slaughtered when they wander outside the park over concerns about the spread of disease.

“We’re hopeful that this will significantly reduce the number of animals that are shipped to slaughter,” Yellowstone spokeswoman Morgan Warthin said.

The number of Yellowstone bison reached a record 5,500 in 2016, and about 2,300 of the animals have been slaughtered and hunted since then, according to park officials. The targeted population set by the Interagency Bison Management Plan is 3,000, but park officials are happy with the current estimated population of about 4,200, Warthin said.

The program greenlighted on Tuesday will begin with 91 bison now being held in park facilities with testing for the disease brucellosis, which causes animals to abort their young.

The animals that initially test negative will be repeatedly tested for months before being transferred to another park facility or to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana for the final phase of testing and monitoring.

If they remain disease-free, the bison will be relocated to start new herds or supplement existing ones for conservation or cultural purposes.

Bison from the first group could be transferred for the final phase by the end of the year, Warthin said.

Many details of the program, including who determines where the bison end up or which public lands are suitable for relocation, will be determined through negotiated agreements, Warthin said.

The program has no end date. “This is really a long-term plan,” she said.

A previous quarantine program resulted in a legal fight over the 2012 transfer of dozens of Yellowstone bison to the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap reservations by neighboring ranchers who worried about property damage and the spread of disease.

An organization that opposed that transfer, United Property Owners of Montana, said the matter is not as big of a concern now if the tribes can keep the bison contained.

“The bottom line for us is the bison need to be owned and managed by a responsible party who can be liable in the event damage occurs,” spokesman Chuck Denowh said.

Montana state veterinarian Marty Zaluski, along with the conservation groups Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the National Parks Conservation Association, said they support the program.

The bison advocacy group Buffalo Field Campaign opposes the quarantine program because its members would like to see the bison restore themselves on the western landscape through natural migration.

The group is concerned that the quarantine program would be used to turn the wild animals into livestock, said spokeswoman Stephanie Seay.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana officials on Thursday rejected a plan to limit commercial fishing guides on the Madison River that flows out of Yellowstone National Park, a top fishing destination where the number of days spent angling has more than doubled in recent years.

The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously voted against the proposal after multiple guides, outfitters and other anglers spoke out against it.

They generally agreed that something needs to be done to alleviate the crowding but believe the commercial guides were being unfairly singled out and didn’t have enough input in developing the plan.

“I’m not sure that targeting merely commercial users in the Madison will get at the problem we’re trying to resolve, which is some crowding and some conflicts during about a six-week period during the summer,” said Richard Lessnar, a former executive director of the Madison River Foundation who lives in Cameron.

The plan proposed by the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks aimed to address the increasingly crowded river, where the total number of angler days has gone from 88,000 in 2012 to 179,000 in 2016.

The most significant increase in use has been by out-of-state tourists, with about three-quarters of the anglers along the upper portion of the river near Yellowstone from out of state, according to a draft environmental study by the department.

Many of those tourists are using guides, and the number of fishing trips by commercial outfitters increased 72 percent between 2008 and 2017.

Fisheries officials say the crowds have also brought greater conflicts between anglers and more litter in the river, and that the increased traffic could eventually hurt the river’s fish populations, which have remained stable up to now.

The plan proposed by the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks would have capped the number of commercial fishing guides at the current level of about 200, which is one of the highest numbers of permitted guides on any river in the state, according to FWP fisheries manager Travis Horton.

The new rules also would have barred guides from certain stretches of the river on different days and prohibited commercial outfitters altogether in a portion of the lower river. Anglers also would have been barred from using vessels to access parts of the river designated for wade and shore fishing only and glass would have been prohibited on the river.

Outfitters and guides said restricting portions of the river on certain days would create bottlenecks on other stretches. Another unintended consequence would be that guided fishing trips could actually increase under the proposal if all 200 outfitters use their allotted 10 trips per day, they said.

Moreover, the plan doesn’t address private, noncommercial anglers who make up more than 80 percent of the year-round use, they said.

FWP director Martha Williams said she heard the comments loud and clear.

“We’re more than happy to hear the comments and go back to the drawing board to some degree,” Williams said.

HELENA, Montana (AP) — Animals and plants can be considered endangered even if they are not on the brink of extinction, a judge ruled in overturning the U.S. government’s re-classification of a small population of grizzly bears living in the forests of Montana and Idaho near the Canada border.

Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is prohibited from narrowing the definition an endangered species in its future decisions without explaining why it wants to make the policy change.

The federal Endangered Species Act defines an endangered species as one that is “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”

In 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service interpreted that to mean that 40 to 50 Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears living in the mountainous, remote part of Montana and Idaho are not endangered because they are not “on the brink of extinction” — an explanation used only once before to justify keeping polar bears from endangered status.

The federal agency used that interpretation to upgrade the status of Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bears to “threatened” after the bears spent decades on a waiting list to be classified as “endangered,” prompting a lawsuit from the conservation group Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Christensen ruled that the government effectively changed its policy without explaining it or seeking public input. He reinstated the Cabinet-Yaak bears’ status as warranting classification as an endangered species — essentially putting them back on the waiting list.

The federal agency first used the “brink of extinction” interpretation in a memo to explain its decision not to list the polar bear as an endangered species in 2008.

The judge said that memo was only supposed to apply to polar bears and not set a new policy for defining endangered species, but that the agency tried to apply it to the Cabinet-Yaak bears.

In future listings of any animals or plants under the Endangered Species Act, the judge said, the Fish and Wildlife Service must prove that the federal law allows the “brink of extinction” interpretation and provide an explanation of why that interpretation is needed.

“It will apply to all other species when the FWS is considering if a species should be listed as endangered,” said Mike Garrity, the executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

A Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

The Cabinet-Yaak bears are one of six grizzly populations in the Northern Rockies from Washington state to Wyoming.

All are considered threatened, with the recent exception of about 700 grizzlies living in and around Yellowstone National Park, about 300 miles southeast of the area with portions of three national forests where the Cabinet-Yaak bears live.

The U.S. government declared Yellowstone grizzlies recovered and lifted federal protections for them last month.

The government agency ruled in 2014 that the Cabinet-Yaak population had stabilized and no longer needed to be considered as an endangered species. The agency acknowledged their numbers were still far short of the 100 bears targeted for a recovered population and still merited “threatened” status.

A “threatened” classification provides many, but not all, of the protections given to endangered species against killing or hurting them and their habitat.

Until that 2014 decision, the Fish and Wildlife Service classified Cabinet-Yaak bears as warranting endangered species status, but ruled that other troubled species had a higher priority, such as the red-crowned parrot in Texas and the Puerto Rico harlequin butterfly.

So the bears spent decades on a list with hundreds of other species waiting for their turn.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies argued the bears are still endangered because their population is less than half of the recovery target.

The conservation group also argued that they are isolated from other bear populations and they face serious threats to their survival from human activities like mining and logging where they live.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — For the second time in a decade, the U.S. government has removed grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region from the threatened species list.

It will be up to the courts again to decide whether they stay off the list.

The decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove federal protections from the approximately 700 bears living across 19,000 square miles in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming took effect Monday.

The bears were determined to be a threatened species in 1975.

The U.S. government attempted to lift protections in 2007, when their numbers topped 600, but two federal courts ruled the bears were still threatened.

Wildlife advocates, conservation groups and Native American tribes have already filed notice that they will sue to reinstate the protections.

HELENA, Montana — Native American tribes, clans and leaders from seven states and Canada say the U.S. government’s recent decision to lift protections for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park area violates their religious freedom.

They are suing to block the government from allowing Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to hold grizzly bear hunts. They say government officials did not consult with them adequately and should have considered their religious and spiritual beliefs when making the decision.

The tribes consider the grizzly sacred. Ben Nuvamsa, a former chairman of Arizona’s Hopi Tribe, said Thursday that the grizzly is both a deity and uncle to his clan.

He says he does not trust the states to prevent the bears’ extinction through hunting.

U.S. Justice Department officials did not immediately respond to a phone message and email for comment.

Protections that have been in place for more than 40 years for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park area will be lifted this summer after U.S. government officials ruled Thursday that the population is no longer threatened.

Grizzlies in all continental U.S. states except Alaska have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1975, when just 136 bears roamed in and around Yellowstone. There are now an estimated 700 grizzlies in the area that includes northwestern Wyoming, southwestern Montana and eastern Idaho, leading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that the population has recovered.

“This achievement stands as one of America’s great conservation successes,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement.

Grizzly bears once numbered about 50,000 and ranged over much of North America. Their population plummeted starting in the 1850s because of widespread hunting and trapping, and the bears now occupy only 2 percent of their original territory.

The final ruling by the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove Yellowstone grizzlies from the list of endangered and threatened species will give jurisdiction over the bears to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming by late July.

That will allow those states to plan limited bear hunts outside the park’s boundaries as long as the overall bear population does not fall below 600 bears. Wyoming and Montana are unlikely to hold hunts this year, state officials said. Idaho officials said it is too early to discuss a possible hunting season.

“We are in no rush to move forward on hunting,” said Laurie Wolf, spokeswoman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “Right now we are really focused still on the conservation of this species.”

Hunting seasons for grizzlies would require approval by each state’s wildlife commission after a public review process that “will be an opportunity to have a rich and robust discussion,” said Brian Nesvik, wildlife division chief of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Hunting bears inside Yellowstone and nearby Grand Teton National Park would still be banned. The bears roam both inside and outside the parks, and their range has been expanding as their numbers have grown.

The Obama administration first proposed removing grizzlies as a threatened species by issuing an initial ruling in March 2016. The 15 months that have passed since then have been used to by federal officials to evaluate states’ grizzly management plans and respond to themes of concern generated by 650,000 comments from the public, including wildlife advocates and Native American tribal officials who are staunchly opposed to hunting grizzly bears.

Some 125 tribes have signed a treaty opposing trophy hunting grizzly bears, which Native Americans consider a sacred animal.

Thursday’s ruling is certain to be challenged in court by conservation groups that argue the Yellowstone bears still face threats to their continued existence. Tim Preso, an attorney for environmental law firm Earthjustice, said his organization will look closely at the rule.

“There’s only one Yellowstone,” he said. “We ought not to take an unjustified gamble with an iconic species of this region.”

Matt Hogan, the deputy regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mountain-Prairie Region, said he is confident that the science behind the decision and the management plans the states will follow will withstand any lawsuit.

“We feel like this species is more than adequately protected in the absence of (Endangered Species Act) protections,” Hogan said.

Wildlife officials in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have been managing the bear population alongside federal government officials for decades. Those states will follow strict regulations to keep a viable population, Hogan said.

The federal agency’s rule sets a minimum population of 500 bears for Yellowstone, and requires states to curb hunting if the population falls below 600.

Scientists also studied the effects of climate change on grizzly bears and their food sources, such as the nuts of whitebark pine trees, which are in decline.

“They found grizzly bears are extremely resilient, extremely flexible and adaptable,” Hogan said.

That adaptation has meant switching to more of a meat-based diet. That carries the risk of bringing the bears into greater conflict with ranchers protecting livestock and hunters searching for elk and deer, said Andrea Santarsiere, an attorney for the wildlife advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity.

“Added to those threats will be trophy hunting,” she said.

The federal agency will continue monitoring the grizzly population over the next five years, and certain factors would prompt a new federal review of the bears’ status.

The ruling does not directly affect other populations of grizzlies that are still classified as threatened but which wildlife officials consider recovered, such as the estimated 1,000 bears in the Northern Continental Divide area of Montana and Idaho.

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AP reporters Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana wildlife officials say the way they count wolves is too expensive and falls far short of an actual population estimate, so they plan to switch to a model that uses information gathered from hunters.

However, wildlife advocates say wolf numbers are declining and the switch could threaten the species’ survival. They worry the data is too unreliable to be used to manage the population.

The change, expected within the next three years after improvements to the model, will be cheaper than the annual wolf counts conducted now and provide a more accurate estimate of the total population, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials said.

“Back in the late ‘90s, early 2000s, we could count every wolf in the state,” wildlife biologist Bob Inman said. “As populations increased into the 700 to 1,000 range, we physically can’t do that anymore.”

The model, which uses hunter sightings to help map areas occupied by wolves, typically puts wolf numbers much higher than the annual minimum counts.

Ranchers and hunters in the state have contended for years that the wolf population is too high and threatens livestock and elk populations.

Wolf advocates say hunting and trapping has led to a decline in wolf numbers in recent years, and the model could obscure the threat the predators are facing.

“If the numbers that are going in are going to be bad, the numbers going out are going to be bad,” said Marc Cooke of the advocacy group Wolves of the Rockies. “I’m very leery of it.”

He said he distrusts hunters’ reporting because of their anti-wolf bias and that state wildlife officials pay too much deference to those hunters.

“There’s a trust gap being developed between the department and wildlife enthusiasts,” he said.

Congress lifted protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho in 2011. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continued to oversee how those states managed their populations for five years to ensure that hunting and trapping did not drive down the predators’ numbers again. A judge lifted federal protections for wolves in Wyoming in April.

In Montana, six wolf specialists for Fish, Wildlife and Parks now verify by sight all the wolves they can to make sure there is more than the minimum required 150 individual wolves and 15 breeding pairs. That means scouring wolf territory year-round on the ground and in the air, an expensive job that became even pricier last year when federal funding ended.

The state has relied primarily on those annual minimum counts, but it also has been using the Patch Occupancy Model since 2007. The model uses data from hunter sightings and runs a formula with variables such as territory and pack size to come up with a population estimate.

The estimates from the model are typically much higher than the minimum wolf counts. For example, the model estimated there were 892 wolves in Montana in 2014 — 61 percent higher than the minimum count of 554 that year.

The model’s population estimates for 2015 and 2016 won’t be available until this summer, Inman said. The annual minimum counts for those years were 536 wolves in 2015 and 477 in 2014.

“In 2016, we didn’t have federal funding and we didn’t direct the specialists to count every wolf,” Inman said. “I’m sure there will be people who will look at that number, and only that number, and think that things are going in the wrong direction, but it’s not the case.”

The minimum counts will still be conducted over the next couple of years while improvements are made to the model at the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Montana.

Cooke said the state agency needs to conduct more outreach and public education to explain what they’re doing, instead of just thrusting it on the public.

HELENA — A federal agency targeted by President Donald Trump for budget cuts next year has only about half the money needed to build a new Yellowstone River dam and bypass channel meant to save an endangered fish, but it plans to begin construction, anyway.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inked a $36 million contract in 2015 with Ames Construction of Burnsville, Minnesota, to build the concrete dam and a channel in Montana for about 125 wild pallid sturgeon to swim to their spawning grounds that are now blocked by an existing rock dam. The dinosaur-like pallid sturgeon can grow up to 6 feet (1.83 meters) long.

The Corps has secured only $19 million for the project under what’s known as a continuing contract clause, according to project manager Tiffany Vanosdall. The Corps uses the clauses for large civil engineering projects like the dam, with the expectation that Congress will fund the balance in subsequent years to complete the work.

Trump has targeted the Corps for a $1 billion spending reduction in his 2018 budget plan, though the plan does not specify which projects would be cut. No money for the Yellowstone River project was allocated in a spending bill released by Congress on Monday.

Despite uncertainty of future funding, Vanosdall said the funding request has been made to Congress and “we expect seamless appropriations.”

Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy organization, opposes the dam. It said Tuesday that the pallid sturgeon’s chances for survival could be even worse if the dam is built and then the money runs out before the fish passage is constructed.

“Then we’re stuck without a fish passage for pallid sturgeon to swim and spawn,” said Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Aaron Hall.

The entire project, including planning, will cost an estimated $59 million and last two to three years. Construction is expected to begin after July 1.

The pallid sturgeon is in jeopardy because they can’t reach their spawning ground to reproduce. An existing rock weir that diverts river water to an irrigation system for about 400 eastern Montana farms blocks their passage.

Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the federal agencies in 2015 to remove the weir, leading the agencies to propose building a new dam and a bypass channel for the fish. A federal judge initially blocked the project, then last month allowed it to proceed after the Corps completed a new environmental analysis.

The advocacy groups say the environmental analysis is insufficient and they plan to ask the judge as early as Tuesday to block the project again. They are skeptical that the fish would use the new bypass channel, and they are seeking the removal of the original rock weir so that the pallid sturgeon can swim unhindered through the Yellowstone River.

Another Corps project manager, Christopher Fassero, said the bypass should work because it will be designed to mimic a natural river channel.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A fossil found by an elk hunter in Montana nearly seven years ago has led to the discovery of a new species of prehistoric sea creature that lived about 70 million years ago in the inland sea that flowed east of the Rocky Mountains.

The new species of elasmosaur is detailed in an article published Thursday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Most elasmosaurs, a type of marine reptile, had necks that could stretch 18 feet, but the fossil discovered in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge is distinct for its much shorter neck — about 7 1/2 feet.

“This group is famous for having ridiculously long necks, I mean necks that have as many as 76 vertebrae,” said Patrick Druckenmiller, co-author of the article and a paleontologist with the University of Alaska Museum of the North. “What absolutely shocked us when we dug it out — it only had somewhere around 40 vertebrae.”

The smaller sea creature lived around the same time and in the same area as the larger ones, which is evidence contradicting the belief that elasmosaurs did not evolve over millions of years to have longer necks, co-author Danielle Serratos said.

Elasmosaurs were carnivorous creatures with small heads and paddle-like limbs that could grow as long as 30 feet. Their fossils have been discovered across the world, and the one discovered in northeastern Montana was well-preserved and nearly complete.

Hunter David Bradt came across the exposed fossil encased in rock while he was hunting for elk in the wildlife refuge in November 2010, Druckenmiller said. He recognized it as a fossil, took photographs and alerted a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee.

The refuge along the Missouri River is popular with hunters for its big game and remote setting.

“This is a vast, remote and rugged place that has changed very little since Lewis and Clark passed through these lands more than 200 years ago,” refuge manager Paul Santavy said.

Bradt, who lives in Florence, Montana, did not immediately return a call for comment.

It took three days to excavate the fossil, but much longer to clean and study it before the determination could be made that it was a new species, Druckenmiller said.

He and Serratos submitted their findings to the journal last year.

Druckenmiller said the inland sea that stretched the width of Montana to Minnesota and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico was teeming with marine reptiles, but relatively few of their fossils have been excavated.

“It’s a total bias — just more people out there are interested in land-living dinosaurs than marine reptiles,” he said. “There would be a lot more known if more people were studying them.”