WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s largest predators, the grizzly bears of the mountain West, may not be returning to the Idaho and Montana wilderness any time soon.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton on Wednesday proposed setting aside a Clinton-era plan to reintroduce grizzlies in those states, saying she would issue a final decision after a 60-day public comment period.

The reintroduction plan has drawn complaints from local officials and ranchers concerned about the bears’ reputation for killing and eating livestock and their infrequent but occasionally violent encounters with people. Environmentalists have seen the relocation issue as a test of Norton’s commitment to protecting rare or endangered species.

Norton’s proposal reflects her determination to cooperate with governors such as Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, a Republican who sued to stop the plan two days before President Bush took office. Kempthorne said the Clinton administration was trying to force "massive, flesh-eating carnivores into Idaho."

But Norton said she is committed to expanding bear populations in Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park. In Yellowstone, the population of about 400 to 600 grizzlies is increasing by 2 percent to 4 percent annually. Glacier Park’s bear population is holding steady at about 400 to 500.

"The grizzlies deserve the best opportunities for their populations to thrive and prosper and I am fully committed to the recovery of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states," Norton said. "Building support from state leaders is an important element to any potential partnership of this size and scope."

Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director, said the proposal puts the oil and mining industries ahead of the environment.

"The secretary of the interior has made it clear that in her vision of America’s wildlands there’s lots of room for oil wells and little room for wildlife," he said.

In November, the Clinton administration announced its $2.1 million plan to relocate at least 25 of the bears, many of them from Canada, to the federal wilderness stretching across a third of Idaho and into western Montana. The goal of the five-year plan was to increase the bear population to several hundred over the next century.

Norton’s predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, had proposed the plan several years ago and hoped to follow the approach used in the largely successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone in 1995.

But the plan, which was to have started this summer, was strongly opposed in Idaho and Montana and was dependent on funding by President Clinton’s successor.

Conservationists argued the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness were ideal relocation sites for the bear, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48 states.

To appease local communities, a 15-member citizen management committee would have been created to help guide state and federal wildlife agencies.

There are only about 1,100 grizzly bears left in the lower 48 states, most of them at Yellowstone, Glacier and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.

For 15,000 years grizzlies roamed western North America. They were killed by fur trappers and government-paid bounty hunters in the past two centuries until their listing as a threatened species in 1975.

The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service spends $450,000 each year for grizzly recovery and has three full-time biologists on the project. In the past century, 17 people have been killed by grizzlies in the contiguous United States, agency officials said.