The six national forests in grizzly country will amend their management plans to support removing grizzly bears from the endangered species list, U.S. Forest Service officials announced Friday.

Intermountain regional forester Jack Troyer said the Forest Service is amending the resource management plans for six national forests: Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Bridger-Teton, Caribou-Targhee, Custer, Gallatin and Shoshone. The amendments will take effect starting in May.

“This conservation effort is a monumental achievement, and the Forest Service is proud to be part of it,” Troyer said in a statement. “The recovery of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population is the result of intensive work by the agencies to improve the condition of grizzly bear habitat and provide for safe visitor experiences throughout the bear’s range.”

Troyer said the six forests in grizzly bear country would follow a conservation strategy that outlines habitat standards, guidelines and monitoring that is important for sustaining a recovered grizzly bear population within the primary conservation area of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Forest plans would emphasize storing food properly, monitoring critical food sources, reducing conflicts with livestock grazing, holding numbers and capacity of developed sites at 1998 levels inside the primary conservation area, and maintaining current road and motorized trail miles inside the primary conservation area.

Troyer said the decision to amend the plans was made in conjunction with forest supervisors in each of the six forests. He said the amendments would adequately address public concerns regarding protection of the bear, road standards, pro-development interests, and social and economic issues.

“We have been involved in the conservation effort for decades, and now the grizzly bear in the Yellowstone ecosystem not only survives, it thrives,” Troyer said. “We are extremely pleased with the progress that has been made, and we are optimistic that the population will continue to flourish.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on March 22 that grizzly bears will no longer qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act by the end of April. The decision comes after more than 30 years of protection,  during which the grizzly bear population increased from between 136 and 312 animals to more than 500 today. The Fish and Wildlife Service started the delisting process for grizzlies in November 2005.

The states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, will manage grizzly bears in a cooperative effort that officials expect to cost about $3.7 million a year.

Conservation groups say grizzly bears remain imperiled in the northern Rockies because of inadequate habitat protection in national forests and the potential decline of their most important food source, whitebark pine nuts. Scientists also have said that the Yellowstone area’s grizzly bear population might not be genetically diverse enough to survive threats such as disease and global climate change.