Once abundant across the American West, populations of the greater sage-grouse have dropped nearly 80% over the last six decades, with over half of that loss occurring in the last two decades alone, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey. (Photo: Bureau of Land Management)
The Trump administration is being sued after rolling back protections for the greater sage-grouse in eight western states, a move that opened up critical sagebrush habitat for energy and mineral development.
A coalition of conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management Monday for approving a management plan in December that reversed a decade-long protection plan that limited oil and gas drilling, mining, transmission lines and other heavy industry within prime sage-grouse habitat.
Once abundant across the American West, populations of the greater sage-grouse have dropped nearly 80% over the last six decades, with over half of that loss occurring in the last two decades alone, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey.
That’s largely due to habitat loss exacerbated by drought, increasing wildfires and the spread of invasive species. Most greater sage-grouse breeding grounds have a 50% chance of disappearing over roughly the next six decades, according to USGS.
The rare bird has been eligible for some Endangered Species Acts protections since the early 2010s. However, in 2015 the BLM and Forest Service – which manage over half of the bird’s remaining habitat – implemented a management plan that aimed to avoid listing the bird and reverse the species’ decline without impinging on the oil and gas industry and agriculture.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Montana, argues that in reversing the 2015 plan, the Trump administration violates several federal laws by disregarding the best available science showing that expanded oil and gas and other development will cause sage grouse populations to decline.
Six conservation groups signed onto the lawsuit: Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Rocky Mountain Wild, Sierra Club, and WildEarth Guardians.
The new management plan eliminates several sagebrush habitat protections created under the 2015 strategy, according to the lawsuit.
The new plan removes the requirement that BLM propose a mineral withdrawal for 11 million acres of prime sage grouse habitat across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming.
Requirements that prioritized new oil and gas leasing outside sage grouse habitat in the 2015 plan were also removed from the Trump administration’s new management plan.
In Nevada, the Trump administration policy would allow the construction of the Greenlink North transmission line while loosening habitat protections “which would destroy nesting and mating grounds,” according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
The new plan also removes grass-height standards for nesting habitat in Nevada, Wyoming, California and Idaho which would increase ecosystem degradation and harm sage grouse, according to the lawsuit.
“The Trump administration’s destructive, illegal plans could nail the coffin shut on our country’s incredible dancing birds unless the courts intervene,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no scientific support for claims that these plans will save sage grouse, and no public support for them either.”
Weakening protections for the rare bird’s habitat will push it to further decline due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation of vast areas of its native habitat, says the lawsuit.
Despite recent conservation efforts, the sagebrush steppe ecosystem is disappearing at an estimated 1.3 million acres per year. The roughly 150 million acres of sage grouse habitat that remain are in increasingly fragmented patches, which prevent the bird from migrating between seasonal habitats.
This story was originally produced by Nevada Current, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Utah News Dispatch, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
