California and Nevada sage grouse protections disappear into hot air

By Erik Molvar

This past Tuesday, the citizens of Reno, Nev. were treated to an impressive act of political sleight of hand. Based on a series of voluntary conservation efforts affecting only 3.4 percent of grouse habitat, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nevertheless determined that 11 major threats to the tiny remnant populations of the Mono Basin sage grouse no longer threaten the species with extinction, as if by magic. The result is a political hijacking of the Endangered Species Act process that is required by law to render decisions based on facts and science. Wildlife loses, healthy lands lose and bureaucrats declare victory.

If the public was expecting Jewell to pull a rabbit out of her hat with an announcement of new local protections, they were surely disappointed. The same threats loom, the same scarce populations hang in the balance, the same absence of habitat protection applies across most of the bird's range. The administration, it seems, simply changed its mind that Mono Basin grouse declines are a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Throughout the press conference announcing withdrawal of the proposed "threatened species" listing, each speaker tried to eclipse the last in praise of the collective, voluntary effort to protect sage grouse. In vapid platitudes, speaker after speaker praised the $45 million spent to improve habitat or secure conservation easements on some 44,800 acres of grouse habitat, neglecting to mention that these measures do not apply to most private lands with sage grouse habitat.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that conservation-minded landowners and agencies are willing to take positive steps to protect sage grouse.

But these voluntary efforts can't make up for the current absence of mandatory protections on the rest of this population's 1.8 million acres of critical habitat, originally proposed for protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service...more

Molvar is the Sagebrush Sea Campaign Director for WildEarth Guardians

We don't get you wrong.  You're preaching the same old environmental gospel:  voluntary okay, coercion the best.  We don't have the time nor the inclination to get involved in on-the-ground planning on a site-specific basis, so send in the jack-booted thugs to do our bidding.   You can't control the site-specific stuff through the courts, but you have great success in court-mandated, top-down thuggery.  Yes, we hear your gospel.  We're just non-believers.