{"id":109162,"date":"2015-09-30T23:04:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T05:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cue-the-lawsuits-over-the-greater-sage-grouse\/"},"modified":"2015-09-30T23:04:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T05:04:53","slug":"cue-the-lawsuits-over-the-greater-sage-grouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cue-the-lawsuits-over-the-greater-sage-grouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Cue the lawsuits over the greater sage grouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A male sage grouses fight for the attention of a female, southwest of Rawlins, Wyo., in this archived photo.<\/span>The Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Last week\u2019s long- awaited decision that the greater sage grouse does not need Endangered Species Act protections was no surprise to anyone who\u2019s been following the bird\u2019s saga.<\/p>\n

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service was looking for every reason possible to avoid putting the wide-ranging bird on the ESA list, because of the potential impact a listing would have on energy production and development across huge swaths of the West.<\/p>\n

Hardline environmental groups were dismayed. For example, here\u2019s the Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s Randi Spivak: \u201cGreater sage grouse have been in precipitous decline for years and deserve better than what they\u2019re getting from the Obama administration.\u201d The CBD is considering its legal options, Spivak told Greenwire, and groups like Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians are as well (most of the mainstream green groups, with a few exceptions like Defenders of Wildlife, are applauding the call).<\/p>\n

Ironically, though, the hardline groups are partly responsible for the decision they\u2019ll be seeking to overturn. If it hadn\u2019t been for the pressure of a deadline created by an environmental group\u2019s lawsuit, it\u2019s not likely that sage grouse conservation efforts would have ever been strengthened enough to circumvent a listing. Instead, things would have gone along as they did before the court-ordered deadline \u2013 some state-level planning, a few collaborative efforts, weak attempts at protecting sage grouse habitat on public land.<\/p>\n

Grouse conservation first began to pick up steam in the late 1990s, when state biologists noted declining populations. Mark Salvo, now of Defenders of Wildlife, was instrumental in first petitioning for the grouse\u2019s protection under the ESA (see our timeline of grouse milestones). That petition helped force the Fish and Wildlife Service to evaluate the bird\u2019s status in 2005, determining that it didn\u2019t need federal protection. But that decision was tainted by political meddling, and Fish and Wildlife had to give it a do-over. The result was that the grouse took a seat in the endangered species waiting room.<\/p>\n

It took another lawsuit, this time filed by WildEarth Guardians, to force Fish and Wildlife to set the September 2015 deadline for getting the bird out of the waiting room: either by listing it or declaring it no longer needed protection. With the looming possibility of federal protection and all its attendant restrictions, collaborative conservation kicked into high gear.<\/p>\n

The subsequent five years of intense efforts and unlikely partnerships are what led the Department of Interior to announce today that the sage grouse doesn\u2019t require federal intervention. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called the run-up \u201cthe largest, most complex land conservation effort ever in the history of the USA, even the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of work ahead,\u201d Jewell continued. \u201cIn the weeks, months and years ahead, we need to implement the state and federal plans and the rangeland fire strategy, learning what\u2019s working, incorporating science into decisions, and staying committed to what\u2019s right for sage grouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Detractors, too, see the feds\u2019 work cut out for them. Especially on the \u201cscience\u201d part. A major justification for the non-listing decision was the release today of final Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service plans for managing sage grouse habitat across 67 million acres, widely praised for their rigor. But some environmental groups charge that those plans ignore the agencies\u2019 own scientific recommendations for conserving the bird and its habitat.<\/p>\n

Enviros won\u2019t be the only ones filing lawsuits. The federal land management plans are sure to be challenged by the oil and gas industry as well, for placing too many restrictions on where and when it can operate. And some Western states are threatening litigation over those plans as well.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as the court cases grind along, the possibility of a future listing if the bird continues to decline should motivate ongoing conservation efforts. \u201cLosses will continue but at declining rates, compared to the historical average,\u201d said Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe. \u201cWe must sustain efforts and implement plans or we will find ourselves reconsidering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

non-listing, expect more legal crawl<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,44],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-dolores"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109162"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}