Some landowners are expressing concern about how expanded sage grouse protections could affect their private property rights. At a state sage grouse meeting last week in Douglas, two ranchers requested that their property be removed from the grouse’s current protected areas or be left out of proposed additions.
Rancher and attorney Peter Nicolaysen has property inside the bird’s core area now but a proposal would add even more. He says he’s worried about proposals that would make it difficult for him to drill new water wells within the bird’s so-called buffer zone, which is six-tenths of a mile around any sage grouse breeding ground.
“We’re constantly trying to improve our water capacity,” Nicolaysen says. “And we certainly don’t want to be restricted and don’t feel it’s appropriate for those types of activities to be considered exempt activities.”
He said if he needed more water in a buffer zone, he’d have to get a biological review. “I’m not a biologist. I don’t have a biologist on staff. I don’t want to go pay and, in some cases can’t afford to go pay, a biologist thousands of dollars to do whatever kind of biological review would meet the criteria of the Game and Fish.”
The proposal would also limit electrical distribution on private property around these breeding areas. Nicolaysen says the Sage Grouse Core Area Strategy has left landowners out of the process and should be required to provide public notice just like any county or city ordinance.
Governor Mead’s sage grouse team will consider the proposals and make their recommendations to the governor by May 28. The governor is expected to make his decisions about changes to the sage grouse core area program by the end of the summer.
