Sage-grouse debate creates tension in the West

The tension between the federal government and Westerners who want to use government-owned land garnered new attention last month, when the Bureau of Land Management moved to round up cattle owned by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. Some state officials fear a decision to list the sage grouse, which would severely limit everything from grazing to energy development on a huge swath of land, could create a slew of new Bundys all over the rural West. “Western states never welcome outsiders coming in and telling them how to do something,” said Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, D, who co-chairs a bipartisan task force working to conserve sage-grouse habitats and prevent its inclusion on a list of threatened animals.The fight over the sage grouse is similar in many respects to the debate over the Northern spotted owl, which in 1990 was listed as threatened. That decision shut down timber operations across more than 24 million acres in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, contributing to the industry’s precipitous decline.The difference is that the sage grouse covers about 165 million acres, almost seven times the range of the spotted owl. The economic impact of virtually shutting down development in sage-grouse habitats could be orders of magnitude greater than what happened in the Pacific Northwest...more