Bird’s the word as Trump’s plan for oil development stalls
Protections for sage grouse’s habitat throw wrench in energy projects out West
WASHINGTON — A strangelooking bird is standing between the Trump administration’s plans to sell more land for oil and gas drilling.
More than a third of a million acres of land scheduled to be leased in Nevada and Colorado have been taken off the auctioning block — at least for now — because this chickenlike creature is squatting over those oil deposits.
It’s the latest example of how the Trump administration’s efforts to open up more of U.S. land and waters to energy development have been stalled by the greater sage grouse.
A federal court threw a wrench into the Trump administration’s latest plans. With a rule issued earlier this year, it sought to change the 2015 policy put in place under President Obama to protect the ground-nesting bird, known for its eccentric courtship dances, throughout the 11 Western states it resides. But last month, a federal court in Boise, Idaho issued a preliminary injunction: U.S District Judge Lynn Winmill said federal scientists need to do more analysis about how the bird may be further imperiled.
That means that for now, the Obama administration plan is in effect in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and Oregon — seven of the 11 states with ever-scarcer sage grouse populations.
Now we’re seeing the results of that ruling: The Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada office halted December’s scheduled sale of 332,000 acres after seeing that more than half encroach too much into sage grouse habitat.
The agency’s Colorado office came to the same conclusion, pulling about another 4,300 acres from auction in the northwest corner of that state last week, including some near the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge.
“It seems to me that the Trump administration is overreaching in its ‘energy dominance’ agenda in its zeal to develop inside the sage grouse habitat,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, one of several environmental groups that sued to stop the sage grouse plan.
But a representative from the oil and gas industry says it is confident the parcels will be back on the auction once the case is resolved. “I’m not terribly worried,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance. “It’s just about complying with the ruling.”
BLM spokesman Derrick Henry said the agency “retains the discretion to decide when to offer parcels for sale.”
The sage grouse’s numbers have dropped by as much as 90 percent due to mining, oil and gas drilling and other development within the sagebrush ecosystem. The Obama-era wildlife managers tried protecting the sage grouse through tighter regulation of miners, ranchers and other developers, but without going so far as to list the bird as endangered. The 2015 compromise divided environmentalists at the time.
The BLM’s parent agency, the Department of the Interior, similarly paused its plans to expand offshore oil and gas leasing into the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic after an unfavorable federal court ruling out of Alaska.