When Jack Connelly first began studying the greater sage
grouse in Idaho in the late 1970s, “it was not unusual to see 500 in a
single flock,” says the biologist, who is retired from the Idaho
Department of Fish and Game. “Today, it would be unusual to see 200.”
That dramatic decline has made the sage grouse—a large,
pointy-tailed bird with showy mating habits—the subject of one of the
biggest endangered-species battles ever in the United States. President
Barack Obama's administration is under court order to decide by 30
September how to protect the bird: declare it an endangered species—the
nuclear option in conservation—or opt for the less onerous conservation
strategies that officials are testing on its fellow rangeland bird, the
lesser prairie chicken (see "Feature: Researchers push to prevent a last dance for the lesser prairie chicken").
An endangered listing could have widespread economic and
environmental consequences. The sage grouse's remaining population is
spread over 67 million hectares in 11 western states, pitting it against
farming, ranching, mining, and energy interests. Some members of
Congress are trying to block any listing, because of the potential cost
to industry and private land owners. They have even vowed to stop
ongoing government efforts to protect grouse on federal lands, which
hold about 65% of its key remaining habitat.
“I don't think it's an overstatement to say that this issue
is the mother of all [endangered species] decisions,” says forestry
scientist Eric Washburn, of the law and lobbying firm Bracewell &
Giuliani in Washington, D.C. He is advising the Environmental Defense
Fund and other conservation groups.
...To blunt the threat, U.S. agencies have been trying to craft
what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Director Daniel Ashe has
called an “epic-scale partnership” with state governments, industry
groups, and private landowners. A major goal is to avoid a federal
listing, which many observers fear will spur expensive, lengthy court
battles and strengthen efforts in Congress to gut the 42-year-old
Endangered Species Act.
Last month, the federal Bureau of Land Management, which
controls most of the grouse's prime habitat, took a major step toward
implementing that partnership. It released a plan for avoiding further
loss of grouse habitat on 20 million hectares of federal land by
minimizing the footprint of energy developments, creating buffers around
mating grounds (known as leks), and taking steps to improve and restore
habitat.
“This is the single largest public land planning effort in
United States history,” says Theo Stein, spokesman for USFWS's mountain
prairie regional office in Lakewood, Colorado. Similar plans are in the
works in states such as Wyoming, home to the largest population of birds
as well as expanding oil and gas operations. The goal, as with the
lesser prairie chicken, is to demonstrate that a federal listing isn't
needed and that grouse and development can coexist.
Some environmental groups are open to the approach.
Washburn's clients, for example, would like to see “good conservation
plans that would avoid a listing,” he says. But others doubt that a
win-win is possible. They note that the birds appear to be extremely
sensitive to industrial activities, often abandoning areas with new
wells or wind turbines. A recent study commissioned by Pew Charitable
Trusts found that grouse living in oil and gas fields near Wyoming's
Powder River Basin and North and South Dakota may already be dropping
into an “extinction vortex.” In some areas, populations dropped 70%
between 2007 and 2013.
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