BLM ANNOUNCES IT IS REOPENING SAGE GROUSE SAGA
The Bureau of Land Management issues a formal notice of its intent to reconsider a controversial Obama-era plan to protect the greater sage grouse, a Western bird that makes its home in the sea of sagebrush that stretches from Colorado to California.
The Trump administration took another step in reopening a conservation controversy over the sage grouse — a chickenlike bird whose fate squabbling environmentalists and Western states alike thought the Obama administration had resolved.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management issued a formal notice of its intent to reconsider a plan to protect the greater sagegrouse, a Western bird that makes its home in the sea of sagebrush that stretches from Colorado to California.
The complex conservation plan was born out of negotiations between the Interior Department, BLM’s parent agency, and Western governors, who sought to keep the bird off the endangered species list and avoid the stringent restrictions such a listing would impose on states.
So together, Colorado and other states and the federal government developed 98 sage grouse habitat management plans in 10 states. But Interior officials felt the Obama-era deal was out of balance.
So in June, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke asked for a review of plans to protect the sage grouse to see whether they limit jobs and energy development. Published in August, a 53-page report concluded that management responsibility for the bird should be shifted to the states.
But some Western governors already have expressed their reservations about Interior’s review.
“We can’t have wholesale changes in wildlife management every four or eight years,” Gov. Matt Mead, RWyo., told the Casper StarTribune this week. “I don’t think that is the best way to sustain populations or provide the necessary predictability to industry and business in our states.”