5% of sage grouse habitat protected on US land A new study by an environmental group that wants the sage grouse listed as a threatened or endangered species shows less than 5 percent of what's left of its dwindling habitat across the West is currently federally protected. The new assessment found four-fifths of the chicken-sized game bird's habitat is adversely affected by either livestock grazing, natural gas and oil development or invasive weeds. "Existing threats to sage grouse and their habitat are enormous," said a copy of the report by WildEarth Guardians obtained by The Associated Press. "Livestock grazing, natural gas and oil development, agricultural conversion, roads, fences, power lines and pipelines, off-road vehicle use, urban sprawl, mining, unnatural fire and invasive weeds are destroying or degrading much of what remains," the group said in the report being made public on Thursday. It singled out livestock grazing—permitted on 91 percent of the bird's range—as "the most ubiquitous use of sage grouse habitat on federal public land." Critics of the report, including the head of the Nevada Department of Wildlife and others who oppose federal listing of the bird, said the study places too much emphasis on grazing and drilling while ignoring other threats to the species such as drought and West Nile virus. "Some of the things they are saying are true, but it is an anti-grazing bent. The situation is way more complicated than what they are talking about here," NDOW Director Kenneth Mayer said. "West Nile and wildfires are the issue, not livestock grazing in my mind."....The "anti-grazing bent" is there because their goal is to eliminate grazing, not protect the sage grouse.