Trump administration officials on Monday advanced an overhaul of land-use rules aimed at opening more of the West to fossil-fuels development, shifting the nation’s strategy for saving imperiled sage grouse away from protecting habitat in favor of counting birds that could be captive-bred.
This move announced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, overriding objections by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, ignited a storm from conservationist critics who accused the administration of kowtowing to the oil and gas industry at the expense of science-based stewardship.
Zinke directed deputies “to follow through” and immediately implement recommendations in a 53-page report to change current rules. Those recommendations include redrawing boundaries of protected habitat, increasing flexibility for land managers making decisions, clarifying standards for granting exceptions, streamlining permissions to use land and changing leasing policy for oil and gas operators. States could use captive-breeding and grouse population targets, rather than healthy habitat, as a basis for managing development.
One advantage of the current habitat-based approach — launched in 2015 to avoid listing grouse as an endangered species — is benefits for 350 other species that depend on a Texas-sized area of sagebrush steppe. These include other birds in trouble, such as Brewer’s sparrows, sage sparrows, golden eagles and the sage thrasher.
The Trump approach gives greater flexibility to states for economic development — drilling, grazing, logging, hard-rock mining — that could hurt land, water and wildlife. Interior officials also are working to increase coal mining on federally managed public land. They’re adjusting royalty payments in favor of coal-mining companies.
Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah favored a relaxation of the grouse-habitat rules, which were completed under Obama administration Interior Secretary Sally Jewell but not implemented by federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management.
“Overall, the sage grouse has experienced a reversal of fortune, with federal sage-grouse policy changing from a tepid conservation plan to an extinction plan that places private profits ahead of all else on public lands,” said Erik Molvar, director of the Wyoming-based Western Watersheds Project.
“The feds have the authority to start taking advantage of loopholes and writing exceptions to sage grouse protections right away,” Molvar said.
However, Western states individually still could emphasize protecting habitat.
“When you conserve habitat, you’re also providing habitat for 350 other species. What will be lost is the possibility of range-wide conservation,” American Bird Conservancy vice president Steve Holmer said. “We’re very concerned about that.”
Trying to save grouse through captive breeding wouldn’t work, Holmer said. “Without adequate habitat, even if you were able to breed a lot of the birds, you’d putting them out into places where they cannot survive.”
Federal scientists in 2010 determined that grouse needed an ecological rescue required under the Endangered Species Act — but delayed action. State leaders in Colorado and across the West began a five-year push to create a grouse-saving strategy that Obama administration officials approved. Government agencies, conservation groups and others committed to invest $750 million to carry out that strategy.
States, sportsmen groups, industry groups, federal officials and conservationists called their collaborative approach a groundbreaking model for saving large landscapes, allowing some development but with carefully targeted restrictions aimed at protecting grouse and other species.
Undoing the conservation efforts won’t be simple for the Interior department, said Michael Saul, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. He described Zinke’s report as an “industry wish list.”
“We will use every tool at our disposal to fight to ensure that BLM and Forest Service actions comply with the law,” Saul wrote in an e-mail, “and to make sure that the greater sage grouse’s dance of the high West does not vanish.”
This year, Hickenlooper and Mead had asked Zinke not to proceed with a review of that plan. Then, when Zinke launched a 60-day review anyway, the governors wrote letters saying any shift away from habitat-based conservation would be wrong.
Hickenlooper on Monday declined to comment. A spokeswoman issued the following statement: “We appreciate that Secretary Zinke gave us the chance to provide input into the review process. We are going through the details now to better understand the final report. We will continue to work with our Colorado stakeholders and the Sage Grouse Task Force to ensure that protection of the sage grouse is effective.”
Chicken-sized foragers famed for predawn mating dances, grouse need healthy sagebrush steppe to survive. Development, grazing and roads have hammered this habitat, reducing grouse populations from millions to less than 500,000. Survivors are clumped across Colorado and 10 other states from the Dakotas to California.
