Issues
Documents reveals disagreement between Western Governors and Interior over sage grouse. Documents obtained in a public records requests reveal tumult between western governors, including Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming, and the Trump administration.
In a private January 12 letter from a public records request to the Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Govs. Matt Mead and John Hickenlooper, then co-chairmen of the Western Governors Association, noted concern over the lack of involvement with state authorities on making some of its Greater sage-grouse changes. According to the documents obtained in the public records request, their concerns were moreso over the lack of collaboration between the gubernatorial administrations and the Interior, rather than the final outcome. However, the letter did note that the sage grouse changes could have impacts on both the bird’s management and states’ economic interests.
Other states shared this stance but didn’t want their names on that letter.
Wyoming rep releases bill on sage grouse habitat. Late last month, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, sponsored and released a bill that would remove wilderness study area statuses of lands in three counties and remove inventoried lands with wilderness characteristics and recommended wilderness statewide.
Wyoming Wilderness Association (WWA) leaders recently spoke out against the bill. According to the WWA, the bill’s introduction threatens more than half of Wyoming’s WSA designations and more than 400,000 acres containing high-desert habitat for species such as elk, deer and sage grouse. “Releasing these areas from WSA status will allow for industrial and motorized uses that will devastate the wilderness of these places,” WWA executive director Khale Century Reno said.
The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources by the House of Representatives.
In the News
Wyoming official calls for Endangered Species Act reform. Fox. The deputy director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday. John Kennedy provided testimony on the role of states in wildlife management, conservation and species recovery activities. Kennedy detailed Wyoming’s efforts to successfully manage hundreds of wildlife species. Kennedy said the state played a key part in what he called “the biggest conservation success story in North America,” the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear. “The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has invested enormous fiscal and personnel resources to monitor and manage the grizzly bears over a period of decades. Since 1980, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has invested over $50 million in grizzly bear recovery – more than any other single entity.” Kennedy also pushed for reform of the Endangered Species Act and recent court decisions re-listing the grizzly bear. “The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has invested enormous fiscal and personnel resources to monitor and manage the grizzly bears over a period of decades,” said Kennedy. “Since 1980, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has invested over $50 million in grizzly bear recovery – more than any other single entity.”
Colo. gets state director amid more staff shuffling. E&E News, Sub req’d. The latest shuffling of senior management at the Bureau of Land Management involves the Oregon-Washington director moving to lead the Colorado office and the assistant director overseeing the bureau’s National Conservation Lands program in Washington, D.C., moving to the Pacific Northwest. Jamie Connell “in the coming weeks” will begin her new post atop BLM Colorado and will bring with her “a remarkable depth of experience relating to natural resources, particularly with energy development, budget, and communications,” Brian Steed, BLM’s deputy director of policy and programs, said in an email sent yesterday to members of the agency’s executive leadership team. “We’re looking forward to having Jamie Connell come back to Colorado after her time in other states around the West,” said Nada Culver, senior counsel and director of the Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center in Denver. Culver said that during Connell’s tenure in Oregon-Washington, “BLM was conscientious in managing sage grouse habitat, and it would certainly be nice to see that approach applied to habitat here in Colorado.” Culver added, “She’s taking the proverbial reins at a time when BLM is making critical decisions for our sage grouse, big game and wilderness, and we’d really like a chance to talk to her about the lay of the land here.”
An awkward bird symbolizes the fight over America’s West. National Geographic. The greater sage grouse is “unquestionably the most comical-looking bird I have ever seen,” ornithologist Charles Bendire noted in 1877. Back then there were millions of sage grouse across the American West. Native peoples and Anglo settlers alike hunted them for feathers and food. Camping in one Wyoming valley in the 1880s, naturalist George Bird Grinnell found it so crammed with grouse that it became a “moving mass of gray.” Such scenes are hard to find today. Less than 10 percent of the bird’s original population remains, about half a million birds scattered across 11 western states and two Canadian provinces. Sage grouse need undisturbed sagebrush; the tough, drought-resistant shrub feeds the birds, especially in winter, and shelters them and their nests. But sagebrush is in retreat everywhere. Massive overgrazing a century ago cleared the way for invasive grasses that now fuel devastating fires in the western part of the bird’s range. Roads and subdivisions, transmission lines, farms, gas fields, and wind turbines—all disrupt what was once an unbroken sea of sage. Preserving sagebrush for grouse would help other animals that depend on the same habitat, such as pronghorn, mule deer, pygmy rabbits, and burrowing owls. But it might prove costly to ranchers, miners, oil and gas developers, and real estate brokers. In 2015 then President Barack Obama’s administration brokered what it hailed as a historic collaboration among those competing interests. Now President Donald Trump’s administration is weakening provisions that steered oil and gas drilling away from areas that had been reserved for sage grouse.
House GOP urges Zinke to lift mining, drilling bans. E&E News, Sub req’d. Top House Natural Resources Committee Republicans renewed their demands for the Interior Department to inventory all the administrative bans on oil, gas and mining development on public lands. Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Chairman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) sent a second letter in as many years to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blasting “unwarranted, unilateral” restrictions imposed under President Obama. The committee requested that the Bureau of Land Management produce a list of all the so-called mineral withdrawals currently in effect for both fuel and non-fuel minerals. “Mineral withdrawals, if they are to occur at all, are more properly addressed through an open legislative process rather than by administrative fiat,” the lawmakers wrote, making a common industry argument. A review by E&E News found that the Obama administration banned new mining on 5.2 million acres and proposed taking nearly 16 million acres off the table during eight years in office The mining industry had high hopes that the Trump administration would lift a slew of those bans, including one prohibiting uranium mining on nearly 1 million acres around the Grand Canyon and another across 101,021 acres of southwestern Oregon. Zinke did scrap the single largest proposed ban — 10 million acres for protecting the greater sage grouse — but he has imposed a 20-year mining ban on 30,000 acres north of Yellowstone National Park (E&E News PM, Sept. 21).
County to appeal Gunnison Sage Grouse Ruling. Crested Butte News. The Gunnison County commissioners have decided to file an appeal of a recent court decision against their position in regard to the Gunnison sage grouse. The board of county commissioners (BOCC) held an executive session Tuesday afternoon to discuss the federal district court ruling to keep the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered species list as threatened. The BOCC decided after the executive session to move to appeal that ruling. Earlier this month, Gunnison County, the Gunnison Stockgrowers Association, the state of Colorado, the state of Utah and San Juan County (Utah) lost their case in federal district court when a judge ruled to keep the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered species list. This ruling more severely restricts what can be done on sage grouse habitat and could negatively impact things like local ranching operations. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) added the Gunnison sage grouse to the list of endangered and threatened wildlife and designated 1.4 million acres in Colorado and Utah as “critical habitat” for the bird. In 2014, the USFWS said only 4,700 Gunnison sage grouse existed, and put the number at 5,000 in 2017.
Trump updates rule-busting agenda. E&E News, Sub req’d. Federal agencies have “greatly exceeded” initial targets for slashing regulatory costs, cutting four significant rules for every new one put in place, a senior administration official told reporters yesterday. The deregulatory push resulted in $23 billion in net regulatory cost savings in fiscal 2018, according to the White House. The federal government expects the trend to continue this coming fiscal year, leading to a projected $18 billion in net regulatory savings, excluding the proposed corporate average fuel economy standards. The White House announced its rule-busting progress in a 2018 regulatory reform report and by releasing the “Fall 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.” BLM, which routinely holds timber sales in western Oregon, as well as Idaho and Wyoming, plans next month to formally propose a rule aimed at allowing it “to resolve protests of forest management decisions, specifically decisions to implement timber sales.” A formal notice will be published in the Federal Register next month, and it will be open for public comment into January. The Fish and Wildlife Service will continue considering protecting numerous species including the lesser prairie chicken and the Sierra Nevada red fox under the Endangered Species Act.
