BLM makes more lands inhabited by greater sage-grouse available for energy development

WASHINGTON (North Dakota Monitor) — The Trump administration is planning on making more acres of public land available for energy and mineral development in eight Western states, a move worrying environmentalists watching for the declining population of greater sage-grouse.

The Bureau of Land Management announced Monday plans to modify its greater sage-grouse land use plan on about 50 million acres of sagebrush across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming.

The bird has been eligible for some Endangered Species Acts protections since the early 2010s, establishing limits on mining oil, gas, transmission lines and other heavy industry operations, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The federal agency says the plan addresses threats to the birds’ habitat while balancing the government’s ability to manage public lands for other uses with states’ input.

“We are strengthening American energy security while ensuring the sage-grouse continues to thrive,” acting Bureau of Land Management director Bill Groffy said in a news release. “Healthy sagebrush country powers our communities, sustains wildlife and supports the economies that make the West strong.”

The greater sage-grouse have been iconic in the Intermountain West, their only habitat, and are recognizable for their chunky bodies and their mating dance. They have been in sharp decline with populations reduced from millions to now fewer than 800,000, according to the BLM. That’s largely because of “habitat loss exacerbated by drought, increasing wildfires and the spread of invasive species.”

In the newly approved Utah plan, areas in the state with the highest conservation standards for greater sage-grouse account for 5.4 million acres and would exclude solar and wind resources, but allow fluid mineral leasing, including geothermal, with “major stipulations.” In those areas, the BLM also increased requirements for permits.

Other areas where greater sage-grouse can live seasonally or year-round, but in smaller numbers and with less quality of life, include 1.6 million acres.

The Center for Biological Diversity said in a release the plan strips protections for the bird, including removing “protections from 4.3 million acres of prime sage-grouse habitat” and reducing the amount of protected habitat in Utah.

Other changes include looser habitat protections in Nevada to allow the construction of the Greenlink North transmission line, which, according to the environmentalists, “would destroy nesting and mating grounds.”

The new plan also removes grass-height standards for nesting habitat, “a shift driven by livestock-industry pressure in Nevada, California and Idaho that further threatens the birds’ existence,” the group said in the release.

The Center for Biological Diversity is planning to sue the administration over the amendment.

“Trump’s reckless actions will speed the extinction of greater sage grouse by allowing unfettered fossil fuel extraction and other destructive development across tens of millions of acres of public lands,” Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity said in the release. “Every president starting with Obama has screwed over these iconic Western birds and the hundreds of other wildlife species that depend on the beautiful sagebrush sea.”