...When conservation groups sued, a judge ordered in 2010 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider and decide by Sept. 30, 2015, whether to keep the “warranted” status quo or declare the bird’s status as an Endangered Species Act candidate “not warranted.” At stake is whether to invoke or prevent the powers of the act to limit energy development, livestock grazing and other activities in the bird’s habitat across 11 states.
For five years the great-grandsons and great-daughters of the pioneers that first plowed through the sagebrush have worked on a massive conservation effort aimed at keeping the sage grouse off the endangered species list.
“We’ve got the federal government and 11 states working on an ecosystem that’s been abused or ignored for 100 years,” said Paul Rutledge of the National Audubon Society...Still, Connelly and others have worked with states, ranchers and others to make the plans strong enough to turn around the bird’s slide. These conservation measures include preventing energy development in the best grouse habitat, stopping fire, reversing the invasion of cheatgrass and junipers into sagebrush and halting the plowing of more sagebrush for farming and subdivisions. They also include new standards for livestock grazing.
“There’s nothing that even resembles the size and scale of the sage grouse conservation effort,” said Tim Griffiths, national coordinator of the Sage Grouse Initiative for the Natural Resources Conservation Service...But because the Fish and Wildlife Service must act before Oct. 1 to
meet the deadline set by U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill of
Boise, it has limited options: • It could keep the current “warranted” status. • It could downgrade the bird’s protection across the range by deciding listing is not warranted. •
It could keep the current “warranted” status on a portion of the range,
while saying listing is “not warranted” on other parts. The goal of federal and state leaders is to develop an approach that will persuade listing officials that plans in place will protect the bird and a listing is not needed. To do that, they need enough conservation measures in place or reasonably certain to be in place to support a scientific judgment not to list.
To meet the “not warranted” goal, federal and state leaders have developed a largely three-pronged conservation approach: upgrading federal management plans to include stronger conservation measures on public lands; upgrading state plans to conserve sage grouse on private and state lands; and developing the fire plan unveiled Tuesday by Jewell to address the greatest threat to the bird in the Great Basin of Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Oregon...more
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