By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
On Wednesday afternoon, in a move supporting the notion that the species needs more time to recover, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would not prematurely remove Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears living in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems—the two largest populations in the continental U.S. Wyoming and Montana had petitioned the agency to delist grizzly bears and turn the management of the animals over to the states.