Sage Grouse Plan Said to Bar Drilling on Some U.S. Land

A flamboyant bird will get new protections Thursday when federal regulators announce a plan to limit oil and gas drilling on its sprawling western U.S. habitat, which may stave off declaring the greater sage-grouse as endangered. With a deadline of September to decide if the chicken-sized bird is endangered, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will unveil ways the Bureau of Land Management will conserve the bird’s habitat, according to two people familiar with the decision. More than half of the grouse’s range is on federal land spread across 11 states. “In a sense, BLM has been actively working to deflect a listing for some time,” said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy in Washington, who hasn’t seen details of the announcement. “Even without the final plan, BLM has already taken at-risk areas out of play for leasing and development.” Long a totem of the American West, the greater sage-grouse has been at the center of one of the nation’s biggest conservation disputes, pitting energy and development interests against naturalists in lawsuits and lobbying campaigns. A decision on its status would be among the most far-reaching since the U.S. protected the northern spotted owl, disrupting logging communities in Oregon in the 1990s. “We’ve seen this story before with what the federal government did in Oregon with the spotted owl,” said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas producers. “We believe the science doesn’t justify these restrictions.”...more