Issues
IPAA annual call up this week. IPAA held its annual call up this week, with over 60 company representatives meeting with members of Congress to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the oil and natural gas industry, including the need for ESA reform. IPAA president and CEO Barry Russell also published an op-ed in Morning Consult at the start of the event, reflecting on what the industry is looking out for in 2018.
17,000 acres removed from oil and gas lease sale week before auction date. On Monday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) removed 26 parcels – 17,300 acres – of land from an oil and natural gas lease auction that is set to begin Monday, March 12. All of the acreage the Department of Interior (DOI) withdrew from the auction was located in central Montana.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s decision to withdraw the land came in response to opposition the Department received from local and national environmental groups concerning the sale. Specifically, in January, three activist groups – the Wilderness Society, Montana Wilderness Association and Park County Environmental Council – filed a formal protest against auctioning off the Montana wilderness, arguing opening the area up to drilling could negatively impact areas such as the Yellowstone River and sage-grouse habitat.
“Multiple use is about balance,” Secretary Zinke’s said in a statement explaining his decision to hold off on the sales. “I’ve always said there are places where it is appropriate to develop and where it’s not.” Absent the Montana land, the DOI will begin to auction off the remaining 83 acres of land stretching from the borders of Montana to the corners of Wyoming next week.
Ad campaign launched in effort to protect regulations governing Greater sage-grouse. The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is commissioning a multimedia ad campaign that will air across Washington D.C. and five Western states to promote the 2015 agreement between invested parties and the federal government to protect the sage-grouse and its habitat while allowing energy development on public lands. The NWF launched the ad campaign in direct response to the Trump administration announcing plans to review the Obama-era conservation effort.
Since the administration’s announcement last fall, numerous groups have spoken out against President Trump’s efforts to roll back protections on the sage-grouse. “The sage-grouse plans are a compromise aimed at saving the bird and keeping public lands open to multiple uses,” Montana Wildlife Federation’s executive director Dave Chadwick said in a statement. “The [Bureau of Land Management (BLM)]’s made-in-the-West approach with a top-down scheme will undermine this collaborative effort and could discourage future efforts.” Additionally, several conservation groups wrote to the Department of Interior (DOI) Secretary Zinke urging him not to revise the plans just last week.
The administration has already begun the process of reviewing the sage-grouse protections. In December 2017 and then again in January, BLM issued two memorandums that implemented changes to the bird’s habitat, one to open more land to energy development and the other to lessen reporting requirements concerning the bird’s status.
In the News
Groups, US reach settlement on predator-killing poisons. Associated Press. U.S. officials have agreed to complete a study on how two predator-killing poisons could be affecting federally protected species as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by environmental and animal-welfare groups. The 10-page agreement filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Montana requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to complete consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of 2021 on the two poisons used by federal workers on rural Western lands to protect livestock. The Center for Biological Diversity and the other groups in the lawsuit filed last year in Montana say Fish and Wildlife is violating the Endangered Species Act by not analyzing with the EPA how sodium cyanide and Compound 1080 could harm federally protected species including grizzly bears and Canada lynx. The groups say the federal agencies in 2011 started but never finished the analysis.
States to begin surveys for lesser-prairie chicken. Associated Press. Wildlife managers in several states will begin surveys later this month to track the population of a grouse that has been the focus of an ongoing legal battle over whether it warrants federal protection. Officials say aerial surveys for the lesser-prairie chicken in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas will start March 16 and run through mid-May. The lesser-prairie chicken was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2014. That decision was vacated two years later as a result of a lawsuit and a subsequent court ruling. Environmentalists then petitioned to have the bird’s status reviewed. As part of a range-wide voluntary conservation plan, economic incentives are offered to landowners and companies that set aside land to reduce impacts to the bird and its grassland habitat.
Funding available through Sage Grouse Initiative. Capital Press. Financial assistance is available for Oregon ranchers through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to improve the health of private rangelands, while also bolstering habitat for sage grouse and other wildlife. The Sage Grouse Initiative, started in 2010 to avoid a potential listing of sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, offers funding and planning for projects such as juniper tree removal, treating invasive grasses, developing new grazing strategies and installing wildlife-friendly livestock watering structures. The initiative is a partnership between ranchers, agencies, universities, nonprofit groups and businesses to promote wildlife conservation through sustainable ranching. Since it began, the NRCS has invested $27.9 million in the program, assisting 261 ranchers on more than 435,000 acres of rangeland across the state.
Fall Chinook season looking poor; one-half 10-year average. Chinook Observer. The US v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee, which provides fishery managers with in-season forecasts, is forecasting a 2018 fall Chinook run into the Columbia River that is 23 percent less than the actual number of fish that returned last year and about one-half of the 10-year average. TAC is forecasting a fall Chinook run in 2018 of 365,600 fish. That’s down from 2017’s actual run of 475,900 fish and far lower than 2017’s forecast of 582,600 fish. TAC completed the preseason forecast Feb. 15, 2018, in preparation for the North of Falcon season-setting process, TAC said in a memorandum, saying that once that process is complete, the forecast could change slightly. The final forecast will be available in mid-April. The preseason estimate was made by a sub-group of TAC members along with others from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The forecasts are down a bit and we think this is primarily due to poor ocean conditions,” said Stuart Ellis, TAC lead and harvest management biologist with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
