Category: Sage Grouse

  • The big federal spending bill. Wolves not removed from endangered list. (Revised on Dec. 18)

    Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthorized- Wildlife and Earth-trashing riders were deleted- There is some good news in the massive spending bill to fund the government. A months long battle to prevent a rider that would delist wolves in the Great Lakes and Wyoming was successful. The wolves will remain on the endangered species list…

  • Soda Fire Recovery, the First Test of New Sage-grouse Amendments, Already a Failure.

    BLM Plans to Turn Landscape into a Cattle Forage Zone. The highly vaunted, but meaningless, land management plans to save sage grouse are being put to the test with the recovery plan for the Soda Fire which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August. Instead of focussing on reestablishing native…

  • SAGE GROUSE POLITICS: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

    The decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) not to list the Greater Sage Grouse under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was an adroit dance of politics. The plan to “save’ the sage grouse has no clothes. The government proposed solution to the bird’s decline includes 14 new sage-grouse recovery plans—consolidated from 98…

  • The Greater Sage-grouse Denied ESA Protection

    Outlook for Iconic Bird is Bleak- By Greta Anderson,  Dr. Michael Connor  and Travis Bruner (208) 720-5595 Hailey, Idaho ­­– In a double-whammy that will doom the sagebrush steppe and the iconic Greater sage-grouse to a dismal future, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced today the Obama Administration’s decision to rely on incomplete planning efforts…

  • Western Watersheds protests BLM sagegrouse plans

    Boise, ID. Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project and other conservation groups filed administrative protests today against 14 federal sage grouse plans, spanning 10 western states saying they don’t adequately protect the birds. WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity joined Western Watersheds in the protests saying the federal plans disregard the scientific consensus on what…

  • Interior puts out its big plan to save sage grouse

    Livestock grazing harm to the imperiled bird ignored- The U. S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) just released the final environmental reviews for proposed land use plans. These, it says, “will help conserve greater sage-grouse habitat and support sustainable economic development on portions of public lands in 10 states across the…

  • Review of Public Broadcasting Nature film The Sagebrush Sea

    This past week, Public Broadcasting’s Nature film series featured the Sagebrush Sea.  The film’s main focus was on the Greater Sage Grouse which is the emblematic creature found in this vast landscape that covers the bulk of many western states including substantial parts of New Mexico Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California, Montana and Idaho.…

  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abandons plan to give ESA protection to bi-state sage grouse

    Was it political expediency? News release RENO, Nev. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today abandoned its plan to give Endangered Species Act protection to Mono Basin sage grouse, a small and isolated population of prairie birds in Nevada and California that remain under threat from grazing, habitat loss and mining development. The agency’s decision…

×