LIKE many hunters, I dream of one day getting a grizzly bear. Yet I’ve passed up numerous opportunities to legally kill grizzlies, both in Alaska and Canada, where their numbers are plentiful. Even though I hunt for all of my meat, I have opted instead to relish being close to these remarkable animals.

It’s important to say this up front. A common refrain among critics of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to remove threatened species protection for grizzly bears in the region around Yellowstone National Park as early as this year is that proponents are motivated only by the desire to shoot one, or to see them vanish altogether.

My belief that the bears should be taken off the threatened species list has to do with the integrity of the Endangered Species Act. Blocking the delisting of charismatic, Instagram-worthy megafauna like bears and wolves undermines the credibility of the act while costing taxpayers millions and diverting resources away from genuinely imperiled, if less photogenic, species.

Around 2,000 species have been listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act since Richard M. Nixon signed it into law in 1973. Only about three dozen have been taken off the lists because their numbers have recovered. Managing endangered species is expensive, and the regulations can be onerous. That they carry such low assurances of success has cost the act support among state governments and landowners who shoulder much of the financial burden. There is increasing hostility toward the act, and toward the species themselves.