Delisting Endangered Species: Project 2025's Blueprint to Strip Federal Protections for Grizzlies, Wolves, and Sage-Grouse
Project 2025 directs the Fish and Wildlife Service to delist grizzly bears and gray wolves, cede sage-grouse management to states, and abolish the USGS Biological Resources Division—actions that would reverse decades of recovery and shift conservation to state or private interests, while the DOJ Civil Rights Division's halt on pattern-or-practice investigations silences enforcement of environmental justice.
Project 2025's species delisting agenda—grizzly bears, gray wolves, and greater sage-grouse—is framed as returning management to 'local expertise' and 'ending federal overreach.' But the science is clear: these species remain ecologically vulnerable. Grizzly bears occupy only a fraction of their historic range, and gray wolf populations are still recovering from near-extermination. The Endangered Species Act is not an impediment to land use; it is the legal floor that prevented these animals from vanishing entirely. The 'conservation triage' and 'data transparency' proposals in this chapter are euphemisms for starving the Fish and Wildlife Service of resources and independence, while the call to abolish the USGS Biological Resources Division would gut the very science needed to make fact-based decisions. This assault on species protection does not exist in isolation—the same administration that moved to delist grizzlies and wolves also halted the DOJ Civil Rights Division's pattern-or-practice investigations into police departments, investigations that often reveal environmental racism in pollution exposure and disproportionate policing of communities of color. When the federal government stops enforcing civil rights and simultaneously weakens environmental protections, it is the Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities who bear the brunt: more polluted air, fewer legal tools to fight it, and less accountability when police violence escalates. Project 2025's vision is a country where wildlife is managed by extractive industries, and people are managed by unaccountable law enforcement.
The humanitarian alternative
Restore and expand the Civil Rights Division's pattern-or-practice enforcement by (1) immediately unfreezing all consent decrees and resuming investigations, (2) increasing the Division's budget by 30% to hire additional attorneys and analysts, (3) requiring DOJ to initiate pattern-or-practice investigations whenever a police department is found to have engaged in a pattern of constitutional violations by a court or civilian review board, and (4) creating a public dashboard of all active pattern-or-practice investigations and consent decree compliance status.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind DOJ memorandum halting pattern-or-practice investigations Attorney General must issue new guidance restoring the Civil Rights Division's authority to initiate pattern-or-practice investigations and enforce existing consent decrees without political approval
- Rehire career civil rights attorneys terminated or reassigned since February 2025 DOJ must restore staffing levels at the Civil Rights Division to pre-2025 levels, including specialized police reform attorneys
- Reinstate consent decrees placed under review DOJ must affirm all consent decrees in effect as of January 20, 2025, and resume court-ordered compliance monitoring
- Congressional oversight hearings House Judiciary Committee must subpoena DOJ documents and testimony regarding the decisions to halt investigations and freeze consent decrees
Reversing it is step one. The forward agenda — what we build so it can’t recur — is in Answers to this entry →
Grounded in
- Trump Administration Cuts Threaten Grizzly Bear Research Team
- The History of Grizzly Bears and their Protections in the Lower 48
- Defending the Grizzly Bear - Earthjustice
- RMEF Pushes for Immediate, Long-Term Action on Grizzly Bears
- The Two Section Twos - Sherrilyn's Newsletter
- The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division Dismisses Biden-Era Police Investigations
- Trump DOJ's Freeze on Police Reform Work Raises Fears of More Violence
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 17: Department of Justice (pp 567-569)"— 534 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems and defend to the Supreme Court of the United States the agency’s fact-based decision to do so.84 l Delist the gray wolf in the lower 48 states in light of its full recovery under the ESA.85 l Cede to western states jurisdiction over the greater sage-grouse, recognizing the on-the-ground expertise of states and preventing use of the sage-grouse to interfere with public access to public land and economic activity. l Direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to end its abuse of Section 10( j) of the ESA by re-introducing so-called “experiment species” populations into areas that no longer qualify as habitat and lie outside the historic ranges of those species, which brings with it the full weight of the ESA in areas previously without federal government oversight.86 l Direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to design and implement an impartial conservation triage program by prioritizing the allocation of limited resources to maximize conservation returns, relative to the conservation goals, under a constrained budget.87 …"