Oil industry fights plan to protect greater sage grouse

The greater sage grouse, famed for its elaborate courtship rituals, has bedeviled Texas oil and gas companies trying to drill in the rocky high plains of the western United States for more than a decade. The tension seemingly should have dissipated in September, when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that her agency would not place the grouse on the federal endangered species list and effectively block drilling across the ground bird’s expansive habitat. But an alternative federal conservation plan has set off a new fight, as Republicans lampoon the Obama administration for allegedly forsaking Western economies through overly restrictive rules...more