Weekly Newsletter | March 22, 2019
Issues
Interior announces changes to sage-grouse bird protections. The Trump administration has finalized revisions to Obama-era greater sage grouse conservation plans and Republicans and Democrats are lining up to weigh in on the final plan. At issue are records of decision (RODs) released by the Interior Department that cement what the department has been working on since 2017. The RODs are based on six environmental impact statements and amended resource management plans, first released last year, covering grouse plans in seven Western states.
Western state governors have weighed their support for the revisions, with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) joining Republican governors in offering support for the revised plans.
For Republican leaders, the revisions outlined “unshackles the West” from crippling regulations that removed large swaths of public land from oil and gas development and mining activity, according to the GOP-led Congressional Western Caucus.
Among other things, the revisions remove almost all 10 million acres of sagebrush focal areas identified in the Obama-era plans as habitat critical to the bird’s survival. The original plans proposed implementing a mineral withdrawal on these 10 million acres.
“Unlike during the Obama administration, which turned a blind eye to local efforts and only seemed to listen to extreme special interest groups, it is now refreshing to have an administration that cares more about species recovery than just controlling more land,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, in a statement.
Conservation groups blasted the revisions, saying the added “modifications, exemptions and waivers” to mandates in the 2015 plans regarding compensatory mitigation, buffers around breeding grounds, no-surface occupancy and seasonal restrictions near sensitive habitat will drive the bird toward extinction.
The revisions are expected to be subjected to upcoming oversight hearings in the House.
Green groups push back on off-roader grouse lawsuit. Four environmental groups have filed a request to intervene in a lawsuit over a bistate sage-grouse found only along the California-Nevada line in U.S. District Court in Reno last week. The California Four Wheel Drive Association and off-road groups in the Sierra Nevada and Nevada’s Pine Nut Mountains sued the Forest Service in December, arguing that a bistate protection plan enacted last year could increase fire danger across the bird’s rangeland habitat.
“The Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and FWS once made promises to conserve the bistate sage grouse and its habitat,” Steve Holmer, vice president of the American Bird Conservancy, said in the request to intervene, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians. The government’s failure to list the bird “is indicative of the agencies’ unwillingness to commit to conservation measures for the birds,” he said.
The recent request to intervene was filed by environmentalists on the same day the Trump administration finalized changes to federal land-use plans that opened up land typically reserved for the grouse to economic development. The conservationists argue that those changes are one of the reasons they should be granted intervenor status for the bistate grouse, which they say is more at risk than the greater sage grouse.
A Forest Service spokeswoman said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
In the News
Calif. backs drought plan despite water district’s concerns. E&E News, Sub req’d. A California board voted yesterday to back a Colorado River drought plan over the objections of the state’s largest user of the river’s water. The state’s Colorado River Board decided to sign onto a letter backing legislation for the Bureau of Reclamation to implement the drought contingency plan, or DCP. The move came one day before Reclamation’s deadline of today for the seven basin states to come to an agreement on the DCP. But the board vote came amid strong criticism of the DCP and the legislation from the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), which is the largest single user of Colorado River water in the entire basin. The 10-member board voted 8-1-1 in favor of the legislation, with IID voting against and a public representative abstaining, according to one of the board’s members. IID said the legislation, pushed by Reclamation and other basin states, would waive the DCP from environmental review. And they argue there is a possibility the plan could harm the Salton Sea, an emerging environmental and public health disaster.
Feds investigate Ore. company’s African wood products. E&E News, Sub req’d. Roseburg Forest Products, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of particleboard and plywood, has ended production and sales of certain lumber products in the midst of a federal investigation into whether the wood came from the illegal logging of African rainforests. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to Oregon Public Broadcasting that its Homeland Security Investigations division has an ongoing investigation into illegal imports of okoumé, a wood used for plywood and veneer siding. The Lacey Act prohibits the trade of plants and wildlife taken, stored or transported illegally. Okoumé hardwood trees grow in the rainforests of west-central Africa, where the deforestation of habitat for endangered species is drawing the concern of conservationists and scientists alike. In a statement, Roseburg Forest Products said that it would cooperate with the investigation and that the company was unaware of alleged issues with its okoumé suppliers until federal investigators called.
Wolf debates heat up. E&E News, Sub req’d. It’s a big month for wolves of many hues, as scientists wrap up a crucial study of red and Mexican gray wolves and multitudes weigh in on the fate of other gray wolves living in the Lower 48 states. The developments now unfolding, though on different tracks, will shape how the animals may — or may not — remain under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Pushed by Congress, a top-level research team put together by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is set to publish on March 28 its report assessing the taxonomic status of the red wolf and Mexican gray wolf. Following the directions lawmakers inserted last March in a spending bill, the nine-member committee, chaired by a Florida State University biologist, will declare whether the red wolf is a taxonomically valid species and whether the Mexican gray wolf is a valid subspecies. They are scientific questions whose answers will have political ramifications. “This is going to be an issue my office will be focused on for as long as I’m a U.S. senator,” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said at one congressional hearing.
