CHEYENNE, Wyo.>> An appeals court is sending a plan to allow continued cattle grazing in a vast, mountainous area of western Wyoming back to federal forest and wildlife officials, telling them to consider limiting how many of the area’s female grizzly bears may be killed for preying on livestock.

Thursday’s ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sides largely with environmental groups who sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service in 2020 over female grizzly deaths — a key factor in the species’ survival in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Many consider the Yellowstone region’s grizzlies a conservation success story. While they remain protected under the Endangered Species Act, their numbers have surged as much as tenfold, to as many as 1,000 animals, since the 1970s.

Such deaths have been increasingly common in the Green River headwaters in the Wind River Range, where in 2019 the U.S. Forest Service granted a 10-year extension allowing almost 9,000 cattle to graze on 270 square miles of Bridger-Teton National Forest.

The plan said wildlife managers could kill up to 72 grizzlies over 10 years. The total would be double the number of grizzlies killed in the area over the previous 20 years.