The Denver Post

Grouse plan getting review

USFS, BLM ordered to assess conservati­on plan for struggling bird in six states.

- By The Associated Press

The U.S. BOISE,

Forest Service is rethinking protection plans for sage grouse in six Western states after a U.S. court agreed with mining companies and others that the agency illegally created some safeguards in Nevada.

The agency announced Tuesday that it’s working with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which also is reviewing its plans for the struggling bird following an order by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Forest Service spokesman John Shivik said the coordinate­d review makes sense two years after federal officials decided the bird shouldn’t receive endangered-species protection­s.

“Now is a good time to say, ‘How well is this working,’ ” he said Wednesday.

The agency is taking public comments in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming through Jan. 5. It says it will review the input before deciding if changes are needed. It’s not clear when the agency will make a decision.

The government in 2015 didn’t list sage grouse but imposed restrictio­ns on land use that were based on multiple plans put forward by the Forest Service and BLM. Many of those plans include sagebrush focal areas that created additional restrictio­ns in places considered key sage grouse habitat.

The federal court in Nevada in March ruled that the Forest Service’s creation of the focal areas in a part of that state violated federal environmen­tal laws because the agency failed to give the public enough informatio­n to participat­e in a meaningful way before creating them.

The focal areas added late in the process in 2015 are found in many states and generally considered one of the reasons sage grouse didn’t receive federal protection.

Focal areas were “a lastminute surprise to a lot of people, and that created a lot of ill will,” said John Freemuth, a Boise State University environmen­tal policy professor and public lands expert. “Whether not doing them would have avoided a sage grouse listing is pure speculatio­n.”

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has complained bitterly about the focal areas and sued shortly after the 2015 federal plan came out, contending the Obama administra­tion acted illegally by imposing federal landuse restrictio­ns. That case remains active.

Because the focal areas are in multiple states, Shivik said, the Forest Service decided to also review its plans outside of Nevada and look at more than just focal areas. Other topics the agency is taking public comments on include grazing guidelines, modifying habitat boundaries and land-use exemptions.

Millions of sage grouse once roamed the West, but developmen­t, livestock grazing and an invasive grass that encourages wildfires have reduced the bird’s population to fewer than 500,000.

Most of the bird’s habitat is on land administer­ed by the BLM. The Forest Service manages about 8 percent of sage grouse habitat.

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