By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) - A federal-state team that oversees the recovery of grizzly bears in and along the northern Continental Divide in Montana believes the animals there are thriving and may no longer require federal protections, the group's spokesman said.

The status of roughly 1,000 bears who roam northwestern Montana, including the Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, is to be reviewed on Tuesday at a Montana meeting of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, the government team responsible for coordinating recovery of the bears in the Lower 48 states.

Committee spokesman Gregg Losinski said government bear managers believe the animals are thriving in the region and may recommend removing them from the federal list of endangered and threatened species.

"The bears are doing very well and it's believed the population has met all the criteria to begin formulating a path to delisting," he said.

Grizzlies were listed as threatened in the Lower 48 states in 1975 after hunting, trapping and poisoning drove their numbers to about 1,000 from an estimated 100,000. Just five populations of the hump-shouldered bears are found in the Lower 48, including more than 750 estimated to roam in and around Yellowstone National Park.

The grizzly committee has no regulatory authority but its recommendations carry weight with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which ultimately will decide if the bears have achieved sufficient population and reproduction gains to warrant removing federal safeguards.

A federal-state-tribal panel that oversees grizzlies in the Yellowstone area has for two years said that the bear population there has come back from extinction and no longer needs U.S. Endangered Species Act protections.

But tribal members of that panel this spring sided with other Indian Nations to demand talks with U.S. wildlife managers before they formally propose delisting bears in and around the park, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

More than 30 tribes have joined to say they oppose handing management of the bears to the three Northern Rocky Mountain states, where sport hunting is planned.

It was unclear if the tribes represented on the subcommittee overseeing northern Continental Divide bears would object to a delisting resolution that may arise at Tuesday's meeting.

Conservationists are against any such proposals, arguing that grizzlies now occupy less than 4 percent of their historic range in the Lower 48.

"Talk of delisting grizzly bears is premature," said Bonnie Rice, Yellowstone-Northern Rockies representative for the Sierra Club.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)