Weekly Newsletter | April 26, 2019

Issues

Coalition seeks court order to halt development of sage-grouse habitat. Late last week, four conservation groups asked a federal court to stop the Interior Department (DOI) from implementing new changes to Obama-era greater sage-grouse conservation plans.

The four groups — Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity and the Prairie Hills Audubon Society — said the court should step in because the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “is now moving rapidly to implement the weakened sage-grouse plans through site-specific decisions that threaten irreparable harm to sage-grouse populations and habitat.”

Though a spokeswoman for DOI said the agency “cannot comment on ongoing litigation,” DOI has defended the grouse plan revisions in the past. Moreover, Secretary Bernhardt told a wildlife and natural resources conference in Denver last month that the revisions amounted to “sanding of rough edges” and are meant to better align with sage-grouse conservation plans developed by individual Western states

The Trump administration revisions, begun in 2017 by former Secretary Ryan Zinke and finalized in decision documents issued last month, cover seven states: California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming; the governors in each of those states, except California, have publicly endorsed the plan revisions.

Moneta Divide field expansion in sage-grouse habitat causes concern. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has concluded its long-awaited draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Moneta Divide project, a 4,000 well expansion of existing production. The project has been under evaluation since at least 2013 and was originally proposed by Encana Oil & Gas Inc. and Burlington Resources Oil & Gas Co. Encana sold its interest in the project in 2015 to Aethon Energy Operating LLC, which is moving forward on the project with Burlington Resources.

Originally, the project raised some concerns due to overlap in core sage-grouse areas designated by the state of Wyoming. It was one of several large oil and gas drilling projects in Wyoming that was deferred by the Obama administration while it completed sage-grouse conservation plans finalized in 2015

Brad Purdy, a BLM spokesman in Cheyenne, Wyo. said BLM will include stipulations in the revised grouse plans finalized last month, including seasonal restrictions during grouse breeding season, as well as restrictions on noise and mandatory buffers of a little more than half a mile around leks.

BLM will not approve any aspect of the Moneta Divide project “that isn’t consistent with the governor’s sage-grouse plans,” Purdy said. “Even under the [revised federal] plans, which this draft EIS conforms to, there’s limits on surface disturbance activities and buffers around leks,” he said. “All that will apply here.” These restrictions, he said, conform with the state of Wyoming’s core sage-grouse area policy that discourages development within grouse habitat.

The Moneta project is estimated to generate $71 million every year in federal royalties, $57.6 million in annual severance taxes — which go to the state — and $70 million in local production taxes for counties.

The EIS release kicked off a 90-day public comment period running through July 18.

In the News

 Court revives challenge to wolf-killing program. E&E News, Sub req’d. A federal appeals court today revived a bid by conservationists to block a gray wolf-killing program in Idaho. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed the case against the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. A lower court judge said the plaintiffs in the case — the Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Clearwater, WildEarth Guardians and Predator Defense — lacked standing to sue because they hadn’t shown how blocking the federal program would result in fewer gray wolf killings The three-judge 9th Circuit panel unanimously disagreed. “If Wildlife Services were to cease its activities — even temporarily — it is possible that fewer wolves would be killed, particularly in the short term,” wrote John Tunheim, a district court judge from Minnesota who was sitting on the 9th Circuit by designation on behalf of the panel. The case concerns a complex program to control gray wolf populations.

Judge won’t lift Pacific fracking suspension. E&E News, Sub req’d. A federal judge this week declined to reconsider his freeze on hydraulic fracturing permits off the California coast.Judge Philip Gutierrez for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last year blocked offshore regulators from approving new well stimulation treatments until they comply with the Endangered Species Act and Coastal Zone Management Act DCOR LLC, an oil and gas company that conducts fracking in the Pacific Ocean, in January asked the judge to rethink the injunction. “Reconsideration does not give parties a ‘second bite at the apple,’ but that is precisely what DCOR seeks here in arguing for the first time that the Court should not have issued an injunction to remedy the ESA and CZMA violations,” Gutierrez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote Tuesday night. Gutierrez was not swayed by DCOR’s argument that the court had failed to consider at least $29.75 million in lost net revenue from an inability to frack off California’s shores. “The Court enjoined the issuance of permits only until the ESA and CZMA processes are completed,” the judge wrote. “The oil will still remain in the ground, and therefore it seems likely that the profits DCOR points to will not be lost entirely, but only delayed.

Four-year project sees hundreds of lesser prairie chickens reintroduced. North Forty News. Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists on Saturday wrapped up a grueling month spent trapping lesser prairie chickens on their breeding grounds – also known as leks – in five counties of western Kansas. It was part of a four-year effort to re-establish the colorful birds on their native sand sagebrush and grasslands in Colorado. The CPW wildlife biologists, led by Jonathan Reitz and Liza Rossi, worked seven days a week, rising well before dawn each day and sitting for hours in blinds, shivering in the dark in below-freezing temperatures, to catch lesser prairie chickens. The biologists used large, remotely controlled drop nets and traps to catch the birds.The biologists hid on the perimeter of the breeding grounds and waited for the birds to arrive at dawn and begin their courtship rituals. Male lesser prairie chickens put on dramatic displays to attract a hen. They will establish a territory on the lek, then bow, drop their wings and raise pinnae feathers on their necks, bringing them to a point behind their heads as they challenge other males.

‘Great environmentalist’ Weld dives into race against Trump. E&E News, Sub req’d. On a clear summer day in 1996, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld (R) signed the Rivers Protection Act, an aggressive environmental policy that put a development buffer around the state’s rivers and creeks. This week, Weld took another dive, making official his long-shot candidacy in the 2020 presidential election as the only Republican challenging President Trump in the primary. Weld served as governor from 1991 to 1997. In promoting his 2020 campaign, Weld highlights his accomplishments cutting spending and taxes in the Bay State, which often gets the moniker “Taxachusetts.” But he also had a number of major environmental accomplishments, including the legislation protecting areas near waterways. Weld helped protect more than 100,000 acres of open space, largely through a bond measure he pushed that enabled the state to acquire the space and set it aside to protect important assets, including wildlife, as well as other purposes. He spearheaded efforts to protect endangered and threatened species such as the piping plover and worked to update septic codes to protect water. “Bill Weld was probably one of the best environmental governors this country has ever had,” said Durand. Durand went on to lead the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection under Weld’s Republican successors, Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift.

Calif. signals new fight with Trump admin. E&E News, Sub req’d. California has signaled a potential new legal fight with President Trump over his moves to deliver more water to the state’s farmers. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) administration on Friday said it will review the environmental impacts of water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the state’s water hub, under state law for the first time. Historically, the state has relied on federal assessments under the Endangered Species Act for the delta. But the Trump administration in February indicated it was reopening those biological opinions in an effort to fulfill a key campaign promise and ship more water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the decision to seek an environmental permit under state law is consistent with its management of the state’s water resources. “California’s commitment to environmental values is unsurpassed and we will continue to operate our water infrastructure in accordance with state law, policies and those values,” she said in a statement. The complicated dispute is centered on the Bay Delta east of San Francisco.

Saving Nevada’s Sage-Grouse, with Inmate Volunteers. KTVN. There was a time, in Nevada’s earliest years, when the little bird with the tall, tall feathers covered the land. Sage-grouse outnumbered people, if you can imagine that. As Shannon Swim, coordinator of the Sagebrush in Prisons Project told us, “Their historic numbers were like 16 million. The sage-grouse is a sagebrush-dependent species, which means that it survives off of sagebrush. So no sagebrush, no sage-grouse.” And it got perilously close to that happening. Pinion and juniper and cheat grass spread across the state. Wildfires made it worse, burning millions of acres of sagebrush. Shannon told us, “We are actually losing a lot of our sagebrush ecosystem in the lower 48 states.” The beautiful bird was even considered for an endangered species. What does a prison have to do with saving them? Well it takes a lot of manpower to bring back their habitat. Today inmates at Warm Springs Correctional Center in Carson City got their hands in the dirt, “mixing all the soil and they are seeding those containers with sagebrush seed.”