Keeping oil and gas development out of sage grouse breeding ground is also essential.
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In the wake of the milestone decision by federal officials to not list the greater sage grouse as endangered or threatened, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead late Tuesday said he intends to pursue a regional initiative to reform the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as incoming Western Governors’ Association (WGA) chairman.
“It does mean a brighter future for one unbelievable, scrappy bird”, Jewell said at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
According to the Bureau of Land Management, almost 54 percent of the Greater Sage Grouse have made their home in Wyoming.
“Working on a comprehensive plan between multiple states is absolutely the right idea, but the level of protections they are applying in some of the grouse’s priority habitat area is too weak to maintain sage grouse there”, Molvar said.
The decision was meant to be a winning compromise between the two positions, and was touted as such by Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and an array of federal agency leaders and state governors who emphasized the balance struck between corporate interests and a need to conserve the birds’ fragile habitat.
Dan Ashe, Director of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, says that while the loss of sage grouse population is still expected, the rate of decline has lessened across the range compared to the historical rate. Under a federal court settlement with the group WildEarth Guardians, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service faced a September 30 deadline to decide the bird’s status. “Together, we have shown that voluntary efforts joining the resources of private landowners, federal and state agencies, and partner organizations can help drive landscape-level conservation that is good for sage-grouse, ranching operations, and rural communities”.
The administration also is proposing to withdraw mining claims on 10 million acres considered key grouse habitat. Since that time, actions from state, federal and private partners have added needed protections, increasing certainty that this important habitat will be protected. Cheatgrass burns hotter and is more susceptible to wildfire than sagebrush and fires in cheatgrass-infested sagebrush are burning up sage grouse habitat at an alarming rate. While the federal plans differ in specifics to reflect local landscapes, threats and conservation approaches, their overall goal is to prevent further degradation of the best remaining sage grouse habitat, minimize disturbance where possible and mitigate unavoidable impacts by protecting and improving similar habitat.
Washburn worked for the Environmental Defense Fund, which is in the process of establishing a conservation exchange program in Colorado in which private land owners who conserve habitat will earn credits they can sell to energy companies in a marketplace, and what Washburn described as the sportsmen community in western states.
He said during Tuesday’s event that although he inherited his father’s distrust of the federal government, he raised his daughter to help him tie markers on ranch fences to keep sage grouse from flying into them and getting killed.
It is about a third the size of the greater sage-grouse, and males have more distinctive white patterns on their tail feathers than male greater sage-grouse.
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Conservation groups warn that the hard work is not over. For example, Wyoming has been implementing its “core area” strategy for over five years. The Obama administration and affected states have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to saving the species without Endangered Species Act protections that many argued would threaten the oil and gas industry and agriculture. Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Idaho have also developed strategies to improve state and private land management to benefit the sage grouse. That includes differences in buffer zone distances and caps on the total amount of land that can be disturbed in prime sage grouse habitat. The FWS anticipates that some sage grouse populations may continue to decline in parts of the range, as conservation efforts begin to take effect.
