Conservation group: Sage grouse, drilling can coexist

A conservation group says the federal government’s proposed plan to protect the greater sage grouse won’t have an impact on oil and gas drilling operations in the West.  The Western Values Project released a report Thursday showing that the area of the grouse’s habitat that federal regulators are considering for protection covers less than 13 percent of existing oil and gas drilling land in the western U.S.  The small percentage, the group said, means the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) protection plan would let the grouse and the fossil fuel industry coexist there. The BLM proposed a plan in May that would protect 11 million acres of “sagebrush focal areas” across the western U.S., as well as another swath of “second-tier” sage grouse habitat there.  The Western Values Project cross-referenced those proposed protection areas with current and projected oil and gas development land tracked by the federal government. The group found that the focal areas would only overlap with 1.34 percent of the energy plays, and the second-tier protection area would overlap with 11.6 percent...more