Issues
Forest Service looks to follow BLM, revise Obama-era plans. Earlier this week, the U.S. Forest Service issued a notice of intent in the Federal Register, announcing proposed changes to Greater sage-grouse protections in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming. The plan calls for the elimination of special designations for crucial habitats as well as opening areas up to mining. This decision follows previous action by the Obama administration in 2015 to impose land-use restrictions on the bird’s habitat instead of listing it.
A key component of the 2015 plan included establishing key sage-grouse habitats called Sagebrush Focal Areas (SFA) that restricted industry-related development. Under the latest proposal, focal areas would be eliminated, putting the Forest Service in lockstep with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as BLM considers similar plan alterations under the order of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
The decision by Secretary Ryan Zinke to revise the sage-grouse plans followed a report last year from a team of federal regulators recommending changes to the plans after a federal court ruling that determined the Obama administration did not give Nevada residents time to review and comment on the proposal to withdraw about 2.8 million acres of SFAs from new mining claims in the state.
The Forest Service is expected to issue a draft environmental impact statement by late August, kicking off a 90-day public review and comment period running through late November.
Senate passes NDAA, prepares for conference battle over sage-grouse. On Monday night, the Senate finished and passed its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a vote of 85-10. While the bill was easily passed with a majority, some remained unsatisfied after an attempt to add a bundle of amendments at the end was rebuked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Recurrently, the sage-grouse has been a sticking point in bicameral NDAA negotiations for several years. This year will be no different as the Senate version of the NDAA distinguishes itself from the House version by omitting provisions for the sage-grouse.
If the House provisions for the sage-grouse, added by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), survives conference then the amendment would place a 10-year prohibition on listing the sage-grouse, and the lesser prairie chicken in addition to delisting the American burying beetle. In an attempt to nix Bishop’s language, House Democrats tried to float a competing amendment but never secured a vote. While the sage-grouse is no stranger to congressional conflict, the Senate has steered clear of the bird in the past. However, interim Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe brings with him a perspective differing from prior leadership, telling reporters that he believes the issue of the sage-grouse belongs in the NDAA.
The Senate version of the bill has been sent back to the House and currently awaits review.
In the News
Greens ask court to mandate Gulf of Mexico species review. E&E News (Sub req’d). The Gulf Restoration Network, Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity filed suit today to compel the Trump administration to review how drilling affects threatened and endangered species in the area. “The Gulf of Mexico has long been written off as America’s dirty gas station, jeopardizing Gulf Coast communities, coastal economies, and thousands of whales, sea turtles, dolphins, oysters, and other wildlife that wind up in the path of oil and gas spills,” Earthjustice attorney Chris Eaton, who is representing the groups, said in a statement. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleges that NOAA Fisheries and the Fish and Wildlife Service have taken too long to complete a new consultation with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on how offshore drilling affects at-risk species. The agencies’ most recent Endangered Species Act assessment for the Gulf ecosystem was in 2007. They launched a new review process after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill but have not yet completed it. The environmental groups say the delay is unreasonable and unlawful.
Maps show BLM leasing parcels in sage grouse habitat. E&E News (Sub req’d). The Bureau of Land Management has offered, or plans to offer, nearly 2 million acres for oil and natural gas leasing inside greater sage grouse habitat — much of it priority habitat — according to research conducted by a coalition of conservation groups. The coalition, composed of the Wilderness Society, National Wildlife Federation and National Audubon Society, released a multistate map today based on BLM data showing that 76 percent of the parcels the agency has offered for lease in Colorado and Nevada, and plans to offer in scheduled lease sales in Utah and Wyoming, are inside areas designated as grouse habitat in Obama-era sage grouse conservation plans finalized in 2015. In the planned Wyoming and Utah lease sales later this year, 85.8 percent of the 1.5 million acres BLM plans to offer for lease are in sage grouse habitat, the data show.
Don’t protect the lesser prairie chicken without talking to landowners. Trib Talk. As The Texas Tribune’s Kiah Collier recently reported, environmental groups have filed lawsuits to place the dunes sagebrush lizard on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) list. This is unfortunate, yet wholly predictable. The ESA was written some 40 years ago to serve as an enforcement tool of last resort to stop species loss. Over the decades since, conservationists and land use planners have become better at building real engagement with public and private sector conservationists in an attempt to secure more habitat conservation. But a sense of foreboding remains when it comes to the long-term trajectory for animals such as the dunes sagebrush lizard and the lesser prairie chicken (LPC).
Bill, appropriators howl over N.C. red wolf protections. E&E News (Sub req’d). The red wolf in North Carolina would lose its long-held Endangered Species Act protections, under a new bill that opens another front in an ongoing dispute. Authored by Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.), the legislation would strip the red wolf of the endangered designation it gained in 1973. Even if it doesn’t become law, the measure marks the latest Capitol Hill bid to shape the wolf’s identity and regulatory status. Rouzer’s H.R. 6119 takes a more aggressive approach than the House Appropriations Committee, which as part of its fiscal 2019 Interior and environment funding bill would give the Fish and Wildlife Service one year to “review and determine” whether the red wolf “is a genetically valid species designation.” The Senate Appropriations Committee offers yet another angle, stating in its version of the fiscal 2019 Interior funding bill that it “acknowledges issues raised by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission regarding the Red Wolf Recovery Program”
Fish and Wildlife Proposes Delisting Endangered Plant. Wyoming Public Media. After less than 20 years on the list, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing the removal of a flowering plant from the list of threatened species. The pink and white Colorado butterfly plant grows up to three feet tall and along waterways in southeast Wyoming and Colorado’s Front Range but urban encroachment nearly wiped it out. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Michael Robinson said the plant was killed off in Nebraska but that private landowners, the city of Fort Collins and F.E. Warren Airforce Base in Cheyenne worked together to save the plant in Wyoming and Colorado. He said the plant made a comeback after mowing, haying and livestock were reduced.
Die like an eagle? New data suggest more to the story. E&E News (Sub req’d). The Fish and Wildlife Service said today it has better data to predict golden and bald eagle fatalities caused by wind turbines, potentially helping officials refine future permitting for wind facilities. In a technical-sounding but consequential move, the agency is asking for public suggestions on how the new information can best be used. Current estimates peg the U.S. bald eagle population at about 143,000 and rising. The golden eagle population is estimated to be about 40,000. Neither bird is listed under the Endangered Species Act, but they are covered under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and, to an extent, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Trump administration’s controversial interpretation of the latter excludes the “incidental take” such as might occur when a bird collides with a wind turbine. Several hundred eagles die annually in wind turbine collisions, officials have estimated, though firm numbers are elusive.
Frog Or Foul: SCOTUS Weighs Historic ESA Case. AG Web. American landowners are about to discover how sacrosanct private property is—or isn’t. Grinding against the edges of government power, a benchmark legal battle is ready for the Supreme Court. The potentially historic case features the expanding scope of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and will either pile on tremendous muscle to federal agency jurisdiction or bolster individual property owner claims. Can federal agencies point-and-click at any private land in the name of critical habitat for a species that does not live on a given piece of land, cannot live on the land with the current environmental conditions, and does not live in the bounds of the state in question? They presently can and they did; just ask Louisiana native Edward Poitevent.
FWS will look again at delisting gray wolves. E&E News (Sub req’d). The Fish and Wildlife Service will once again work on a proposal to remove wolves from the endangered species list in the Great Lakes region and elsewhere in the continental United States. The agency has tried in previous administrations to delist gray wolves in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. It argues that the predators have fully recovered from their low point in the 1960s and ’70s. Fish and Wildlife “has begun reviewing the status of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act,” spokesman Gavin Shire said in an email yesterday.
Lawsuit alleges Oregon Department of Forestry is violating Endangered Species Act in Tillamook, Clatsop State Forests. Gales Creek Journal. A contingency of fishing and conservation groups on June 13 filed a lawsuit in Oregon’s U.S. District Court arguing that some Oregon Department of Forestry logging practices violate the Endangered Species Act of 1973, endangering protected coho salmon. The plaintiffs — the Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Institute for Fisheries Resources, and the Native Fish Society — claim road-building and logging on steep slopes in the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests causes landslides and erosion that damage salmon habitats in northwest Oregon when detrimental sediment is released into coho salmon spawning grounds
