Sage grouse habitat in six states to be opened
Interior changes course on Obama-era compact
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department said Thursday that it is withdrawing protections for 10 million acres of federal lands used by the threatened sage grouse to open it up for energy development.
The plan would allow mining and other development in areas where it now is prohibited in six Western states: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.
The Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, said a recent analysis showed that mining or grazing would not pose a significant threat to the sage grouse, a ground-dwelling, chickenlike bird that roams across vast areas of the West.
A proposal by the Obama administration to protect 10 million acres from development “to prevent 10,000 (acres) from potential mineral development was a complete overreach,” said acting BLM Director Mike Nedd.
He and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pledged to work closely with states to protect the health of the sage brush-dominated lands. Interior said Thursday that it is seeking comment on plans to revise sage grouse conservation plans across the bird’s range.
Environmental groups said Interior was jeopardizing the bird’s habitat — and its survival.
The 2015 plan was hashed out under President Barack Obama as a way to keep the bird off the endangered species list following a decades-long population decline caused by disease and pressure on habitat from energy development, grazing and wildfires.
Zinke order a review of the Obama plan this summer, saying he wanted to give Western states greater flexibility to allow mining, logging and other economic development where it now is prohibited. Zinke insisted that the federal government and the states can work together to protect the sage grouse and its habitat while not slowing economic growth and job creation.
Mining companies, ranchers and governors in some Western states — especially Utah, Idaho and Nevada — said the 2015 plan would impede oil and gas drilling and other economic activity. Republican governors in those states urged that conservation efforts focus on bird populations in a state rather than on habitat management, which frequently results in land-use restrictions.
On the other side, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Republican Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming have said they oppose any changes to the habitat-management model.
John Swartout, a senior adviser to Hickenlooper, said changes to the conservation plan — developed over years with local and state involvement — could lead to a future Endangered Species Act listing for the sage grouse.
“We didn’t work this hard to throw it all away and get a listing” on the Endangered Species Act, Swartout told The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction, Colo.
Comments on the plan will be accepted through late November.