Predators and Precedents: Grizzly Bears, Joe Pickett, and the Law of Delisting

When a grizzly bear kills a fisherman in C.J. Box’s Three-Inch Teeth, the attack occurs in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains—territory where bears “weren’t supposed to be.” This fictional scenario reflects a real dilemma: grizzly bears have recovered so successfully that they now roam beyond designated recovery zones, yet federal delisting efforts have repeatedly failed, caught between contested science and competing narratives about connectivity requirements, ESA policies, federal authority, state and local control, and the prospects for coexistence with apex other predators. This Article examines how popular culture, legal frameworks, and conservation science intersect to shape wildlife policy. Box’s novel— mixing biological accuracy with dramatic license—both reflects and amplifies the competing narratives that operate beneath explicit policy debates. These narratives about species vulnerability, federal versus state management authority, and human–wildlife conflict risk have become embedded in legal frameworks.

The result is a governance system in which connectivity is both essential for conservation and a barrier to delisting, and where the challenge extends beyond managing bears to managing the cultural contexts of human–wildlife coexistence.