Two agencies officially announced Thursday their plans to restore a population of grizzly bears to the North Cascade Mountains.

The National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife will seek to move three to seven grizzly bears a year over five to 10 years to establish an initial population of 25 grizzly bears. The animals will be translocated from ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains and Interior British Columbia, according to a press release.

Grizzly bears were native to the North Cascades for thousands of years but disappeared mostly due to hunting by humans. The last confirmed sighting of a grizzly bear in the U.S. portion of the North Cascades Mountains was in 1996. The North Cascades ecosystem is roughly 9,800 square miles, which is larger than the state of New Jersey, and home to some of the most intact wildlands in the contiguous U.S., according to the release.

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