The Trump Administration: The Latest Threat to Sage-Grouse
You’ll never guess what we did this month! We submitted comments on the National Greater Sage-Grouse Planning Strategy…again!
Those in tune with grouse and sagebrush may recall the planning strategy, an unprecedented effort by the federal government to improve management of more than 60 million acres of the Sagebrush Sea. This expansive but fragile landscape is vital to fish and wildlife, recreation, western communities and sustainable economic development. The final plans were completed in 2015, after four years and $45 million invested in the process.
But now the Trump administration, after eliminating a host of environmental policies, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and downsizing two iconic national monuments, has set its sights on this seminal effort to conserve sage-grouse and hundreds of other species that depend on high desert habitat.
While not perfect, the sage-grouse plans enjoy support from diverse interests committed to their implementation, including western governors and hundreds of stakeholders who collaborated for years to help develop the plans. So why dismantle them?
One doesn’t have to look far for the answer. In fact, Secretary Zinke underscored his priorities in his orders directing the review and revision of the current plans: more oil and gas drilling, mining and other land use and development, even in the most essential habitat for sage-grouse and other wildlife.
And so, the Trump administration’s effort is now underway, the second major planning process for sage-grouse in six years. Secretary Zinke — who doesn’t seem to understand either public lands management or wildlife conservation — has targeted a number of existing protections for sage-grouse for potential revision or rescission, including downsizing designated habitat areas and protective buffers around breeding and nesting habitat. A few of the Secretary’s directives are downright absurd, such as exploring the use of captive breeding programs to augment sage-grouse populations, a technique that just doesn’t work for this imperiled native grouse species.
Defenders has thrown ourselves and our expertise into this new planning process, submitting dozens of pages of technical comments. But we’re not just defending the current plans, we’re challenging the Bureau of Land Management and its sister agencies to strengthen sage-grouse conservation measures in accordance with the best available science. The latest research recommends…
1. Conserving all of the most important sage-grouse habitat. In addition to breeding, nesting and brood-rearing habitat, preserving sage-grouse wintering areas is particularly important for maintaining local populations. The current plans should be improved to protect all seasonal habitats from harmful land use and development.
2. Connecting sage-grouse habitats. Federal agencies developed fifteen regional plans to cover the sage-grouse’s eleven-state range, but didn’t stitch them together into a matrix that can provide for the species across federal and state jurisdictions. The new planning process is an opportunity to connect sage-grouse habitat cores across boundaries.
3. Protecting sagebrush reserves. It is important, particularly in light of climate change, that land managers set aside areas both where sage-grouse are now and where they will need to go in the future; the current conservation plans should be revised to formally designate reserve areas.
4. Reducing manageable impacts in sage-grouse habitat. Some threats to sage-grouse are difficult to manage, such as wildfire and invasive species. The federal conservation strategy should compensate for those effects by emphasizing management of land uses that we can control, such as livestock grazing, which contributes to unnatural fire and the spread of invasive species.
5. Restoring degraded sage-grouse habitat. Sage-grouse have already lost nearly half their range to agriculture and development. The federal sage-grouse conservation strategy should be updated to support active restoration of areas that can still be used by sage-grouse and other wildlife.
Weakening the current sage-grouse plans could have major consequences beyond just sage-grouse; other wildlife, watersheds, sagebrush grasslands and the western communities and economies that depend on them all stand to lose. Defenders and our allies will wield the best available science, like sword and shield, as we oppose the Trump administration’s attempts to undo the years of progress we’ve achieved collaborating to conserve this remarkable bird and its habitat. And if changes are to be made, we recommend change for the better.
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Medium to hear the latest from our experts and sign up for our emails to take action and join us in our fight to protect wildlife.
