Last month, the Bureau of Land Management rolled out several new landscape vision plans that will shape public land protections in the West for the next two decades. But some conservation groups--including the Sierra Club and Western Watersheds Project--say these plans don’t use strict enough science to stop the extinction of the greater sage grouse.
Each of these plan amendments has different deficiencies where they do not measure up to the science and they are not consistent with each other.
Wildlife biologist Erik Molvar with WildEarth Guardians says that’s why his group decided to join forces in filing an administrative protest against those federal plans.
“Well, this kind of a protest is an opportunity for the director of the BLM in Washington D.C. to review all of the decisions that have been proposed by the state BLM offices,” he says. “Each of these plan amendments has different deficiencies where they don’t measure up to the science and they’re not consistent with each other.”
He says the federal plans use faulty science and allow too much oil and gas development in the bird’s habitat. He says the feds can either fix the plans or list the bird as an endangered species.
“It all depends on which direction the Obama administration wants to go. They can protect the sage grouse under the plans. They can protect the sage grouse under the endangered species act. They have to do one or the other.”
Molvar says the BLM director in Washington will have until mid-August to review the management plans put out by his agency. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife is required by court order to decide by September whether sage grouse should be listed as endangered.
