Defenders Disappointed in Habitat Management Changes for Imperiled Greater Sage-Grouse

The Bureau of Land Management today finalized resource management plan amendments for the greater sage-grouse in Oregon and Colorado — two of 10 states included in the ongoing greater sage-grouse plan amendment process. In its announcement, BLM signaled that it may not complete amendments for the remaining states that contain crucial greater sage-grouse populations. 

This patchwork of plan amendments, including those issued today for Colorado and Oregon plan, are likely insufficient to safeguard the Sagebrush Sea, considered to be one of North America’s most threatened biomes and the habitat for the greater sage-grouse.  

"It is crucial that consistent and science-based protections for the greater sage grouse are applied across its entire range,” said Vera Smith, senior federal lands analyst for Defenders of Wildlife. “BLM’s patchwork approach won’t stop the unravelling of this fragile ecosystem or sufficiently safeguard the wildlife that rely on it. In addition to the sage-grouse, this includes pronghorn, mule deer, trout and hundreds of plants and animals that are categorized as at-risk.”

Background

In 2015, BLM along with other federal and state agencies agreed upon a rangewide sage-grouse conservation strategy. BLM amended its land use plans across the west to incorporate the conservation provisions.  The first Trump administration amended the plans in 2019 weakening key conservation provisions.  In 2022, BLM announced its intention to revise the plans again.  

The Colorado and Oregon plan amendments issued today make slight changes to previous sage-grouse plans under which substantial habitat loss has occurred. Notably, BLM opted to discard a habitat management zone that was included in the proposed amendments and that would have provided the strongest level of protection to exceptionally important habitats (over 4 million acres rangewide).  

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2010 found the greater sage-grouse warranted for listing under the Endangered Species Act. In 2015, with the assurances provided by the 2015 land use plan amendments, the Service shifted the greater sage-grouse’s status from warranted to not warranted. In doing so, FWS identified specific components of the 2015 plans that supported this shift, including designation of 10 million acres of Sagebrush Focal Areas, proposed mineral withdrawal, and adoption of a net conservation gain standard in the context of mitigation. BLM removed these protections in the 2019 amendments and failed to reinstate them in the Colorado and Oregon plan amendments finalized today.  

Greater sage-grouse have high fidelity to their mating and nesting areas which makes it imperative that these specific habitat areas are protected from oil and gas drilling, roads and transmission lines, mines and other disturbances. They also require wetter landscape areas for rearing young and thus are losing habitat because of climate change and poor land use practices.  

Greater sage-grouse rangewide declined 80% from 1966-2021 and declined 41% from 2002-2021. Between 2012 and 2018, over one million acres of greater sage-grouse habitat on BLM-managed lands was lost.