Federal and Idaho biologists say a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision on grizzly bears Tuesday offers them a clear path back to delisting the West’s biggest predator in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

The three-judge panel upheld U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s 2010 order to return grizzlies to the threatened species list. But it also overturned his ruling that the government’s conservation strategy was not adequate to protect the bears after delisting.

Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear coordinator, said he has begun talks with Yellowstone researchers about gathering the data they need to make the case for delisting.

“It will take us months to do this,” Servheen said. “We have to get the process right.”

The decision of whether grizzlies belong on the threatened list is not just a bureaucratic or theoretical matter: It will determine whether the state or the federal government manages the population, as well as when and how bears that threaten recreation or residential areas can be killed.

Successful recovery at Yellowstone could one day lead to removing bear populations in other parts of Idaho from federal protection.

Ultimately, it also could determine whether Idaho will one day have a grizzly hunting season.

In their Tuesday ruling, the appeals judges said the 2010 decision to remove the bears from the threatened list did not do enough to explain how the grizzly bear can continue to be healthy as one of its key food sources — whitebark pine nuts — disappears because of beetle damage related to climate change.

“It may be that scientists will compile data demonstrating grizzly population stability in the face of whitebark pine declines,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “Such information, however, simply is not in the record before us.”

Servheen, of Missoula, Mont., has been working on grizzly bear recovery since the 1970s.

He said expanding bear numbers and a tripling of the population of 200 or fewer to more than 600 shows the success of the conservation strategy.

“We have to do a better job of explaining why the loss of whitebark pine is not something that would inhibit the recovery of Yellowstone grizzly bears,” Servheen said.

But Louisa Willcox of Livingston, Mont., with the Natural Resources Defense Council, also has been working on grizzly bear issues for more than 25 years. She sees the science and the bear’s challenges differently.

This year, 41 bears died in and around Yellowstone because of human activities. Where Servheen and other federal biologists see expanding bear populations, Willcox sees bears forced into conflicts with humans as whitebark pine disappears.

“We may not be seeing an expanding bear population,” she said. “We’re seeing a redistribution of the population across the landscape.”

Willcox wants Servheen to bring climatologists and whitebark pine experts into the process before trying to delist the bears.

She also wants them to listen to groups like hers and to hunters and ranchers, and seek new ways to reduce conflicts.

“This should be a clarion call to regroup and redo how the recovery process works,” Willcox said.

Jim Unsworth is the Idaho Department of Fish and Game deputy director who sits on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee that oversees bear management.

He said he’s confident the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has new information that addresses “the concerns over whitebark pine and presents an even stronger case for delisting grizzly bears.”

The Idaho Wildlife Federation and the National Wildlife Federation argued before the judges for the government. Tom France, the group’s Northern Rockies Regional director, said he hopes and expects the process to follow the science that is emerging about bears and whitebark pine.

“I’m not going to second- guess the outcome,” he said.

But after more years of developing the strategy for protecting bears after delisting, he thinks federal officials should be happy with where they are.

“After 15 years, the court has gotten us down to one issue,” France said. “It’s a difficult issue, but it’s only one.”

Rocky Barker: 377-6484