8A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2017
Sage grouse policy heading back to square one
Protections
under federal
reassessment
By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press
SPARKS, Nev. — Federal
scientists and land managers
who’ve been crafting strate-
gies to protect a ground-dwell-
ing bird’s habitat across the
American West for nearly two
decades are going back to the
drawing board under a new
Trump administration edict to
reassess existing plans con-
demned by ranchers, miners
and energy developers.
Federal officials are wrap-
ping up a series of public meet-
ings with three sessions start-
ing Tuesday in Utah ahead of a
Nov. 27 cutoff for comment on
Interior Secretary Ryan Zin-
ke’s order last month to con-
sider revisions to land man-
agement amendments for the
greater sage grouse that were
adopted under the Obama
administration.
Zinke says he wants to
make sure the amendments
don’t harm local economies
in 11 western states and allow
the states to have maximum
control over the efforts within
their borders.
Conservationists say it’s a
thinly veiled attempt to allow
more livestock grazing and
drilling, similar to Trump’s
efforts to roll back national
monument designations, but
on a much larger scale. They
warn it could land the hen-
sized bird on the endangered
species list in 2020 when the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
is scheduled to review its 2015
decision not to list it.
“They appear to be disman-
AP Photo/Scott Sonner
AP Photo/David Zalubowski
Federal scientists and land managers who’ve been crafting strategies to protect sage
grouse habitat across the West for nearly two decades are going back to the drawing
board under a new Trump administration edict to reassess existing plans condemned by
ranchers, miners and energy developers.
tling the whole land-planning
amendment system and start-
ing over,” said Patrick Don-
nelly, the Center for Biolog-
ical Diversity’s Nevada state
director.
“It’s revisionist history,” he
told a Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice official during a scoping
meeting-turned-brainstorming
session at a Sparks hotel-ca-
sino Wednesday night.
Instead of recording pub-
lic testimony, agency officials
marked up easel pads with
lists of criticisms, concerns
and suggestions. About 80
participants moved between
five breakout groups includ-
ing “minerals,” “livestock
grazing,” and “wildlife and
vegetation.”
Familiar ground
They treaded familiar
ground. Disagreement reigned
over the size of protective
buffer zones around grouse
breeding grounds, states’ role
in setting federal policy and
whether cattle or wild horses
cause more habitat degrada-
tion. There was general agree-
ment that invasive cheat grass
is fueling one of the biggest
threats — catastrophic wild-
fires — but little consensus on
what to do about it.
“I don’t understand why
we’re starting all over again,”
shouted a man who briefly dis-
rupted the meeting and refused
to provide his name.
Nevada Farm Bureau Vice
President Doug Busselman
said research increasingly sug-
gests properly regulated graz-
ing reduces fire fuels. But he
said existing policy is “tak-
ing a restrictive approach …
and then watching massive
fires sweep across the land-
scape, setting up the process
for expansion of cheat grass,
then more fire.”
The U.S. House Natural
Resources Committee heard
the same thing last month
from Idaho House Speaker
Scott Bedke, a fifth-generation
rancher who blames grazing
restrictions for a wildfire that
wiped out his family’s winter
grazing allotment this year.
“In the process of placat-
ing anti-grazing activists, fed-
eral agencies have made the
No. 1 threat to the greater sage
grouse in Idaho worse,” Bedke
said. Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch”
Otter, a Republican, filed one
of a series of lawsuits aimed at
blocking the Obama plans.
Conversely,
Republican
Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming,
Democratic Gov. John Hicken-
looper of Colorado and Dem-
ocratic Gov. Steve Bullock
of Montana have expressed
concern that altering existing
plans could undermine efforts
to prevent a listing. Nevada
GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval also
has cautioned against whole-
sale changes, although he
applauded Zinke’s recent lift-
ing of a temporary ban on new
mining claims across about
15,600 square miles adopted
under Obama.
Ken Vicencio, right, a rangeland manager for the the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, gestures while
Matt Magaletti, BLM’s sage grouse implementation lead,
holds a list of concerns and suggestions offered by par-
ticipants at a public meeting on federal management of
the greater sage grouse in 11 western states at the Nugget
hotel-casino in Sparks, Nev.
Years to work out
Montana Fish and Wildlife
Commission Chairman Dan
Vermillion said existing pro-
tections took a diverse group
of stakeholders years to work
out.
“Those plans were essen-
tial to keeping sage grouse
from becoming endangered,”
he wrote in a Tuesday letter to
Zinke.
That’s the message Karen
Boeger delivered in Sparks.
“We all duked it out on
these plans,” said Boeger, a
retired teacher and member of
the Nevada Chapter of Back-
country Hunters and Anglers
who previously served on a
Bureau of Land Management
advisory board. “We’ve hardly
gotten out of the chute. Let’s
give it a chance.”
The bureau’s acting dep-
uty director, John Ruhs, under-
stands the frustration.
“A lot of folks have been
engaged in this topic for a
long time. Some have been
at the table going back 15
years or more,” said Ruhs,
who’s worked for the agency
in Nevada, Oregon, Colorado
and Idaho.
“We’re trying to find the
best methods to allow all uses
of the land to occur and still
ensure protection of habitat,”
he said. “It’s a tall order.”
Donnelly, whose Arizo-
na-based group has sued over
failure to list hundreds of spe-
cies, said the intent of the
Obama amendments “was very
clear: Prevent the listing of the
sage grouse.” That goal seems
to have gotten lost, he said.
“We heard a lot about min-
eral withdrawals and local col-
laboration, but all in the name
of what?” Donnelly asked.
“Are we still committed to
conserving sage grouse, or is
the intention to mine and drill
every acre of the West? If that’s
the case, we are plunging head-
long toward listing the grouse.”
CLASSIFIEDS
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