The U.S. Interior Department says the greater sage grouse does not need federal protections across its 11-state Western range after some limits were put on energy development and other activities.
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The federal government created a smoke screen for plans that will suffocate industry with its Tuesday announcement that it won’t list the greater sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species, Utah officials asserted. She shared the stage with the governors of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge outside Denver. The greater sage-grouse conservation strategy comprises the largest landscape-level conservation effort in USA history and demonstrates that through strong Federal, state, and private collaboration, the ESA can be an effective and flexible tool in encouraging conservation and providing the certainty needed for sustainable economic development in our states and communities.
It’s a proxy for environmental groups who say that keeping the sage grouse thriving will protect the sage brush that it lives in which in turn will protect hundreds of other species that live in the desert that will in turn preserve the entire southwest.
Mead says sage grouse can thrive while Wyoming continues to provide energy to the rest of the nation.
Wyoming is home to as many as 500,000 greater sage grouse.
“The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has determined that these collective efforts add up to a bright future for the sage grouse”, Jewell said in a video posted to YouTube.
But the sage grouse is not simply a bird, it’s a proxy.
Ranchers and farmers through sage grouse country have engaged in voluntary efforts aimed at improving sage grouse habitat in order to keep the iconic western bird from becoming the newest addition to the Endangered Species Act. “However, regulatory mechanisms provided by federal and three state plans reduce threats on approximately 90% of the breeding habitat across the species’ range”.
The Obama administration calls this striking a balance to save the bird from extinction without crippling the mineral-rich economy of the West. Critics, like Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, call it “a de facto listing” that won’t help the bird, but will control development.
“Continued active management of western rangelands through proper grazing management has and can continue to enhance sage grouse habitat and populations”, Stallman said.
Electric co-ops in the affected states have been active participants in the development of conservation plans under the leadership of the Western Governors Association. “However, the agency should have followed state-developed conservation plans more closely”.
The Independent Petroleum Association, meanwhile, says the land use plans will hurt the country’s smaller oil and natural gas producers, which operate about 95 percent of its wells.
“However, it is critical that we work together to implement BLM plans and ensure every state plan is striving to complement important conservation objectives on private and state lands”, Maysmith said.
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Erik Molvar with WildEarth Guardians said Interior officials had turned an opportunity to help the grouse into “an epic conservation failure”. But the US Department of Interior is pushing the collaborative effort as an alternative solution to healthy populations. Federal management would have led to tighter restrictions regarding land use near the bird’s habitat, which many argue would have had a significant impact on Colorado’s oil and gas industry.
