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Tuesday, August 18, 2015
New Study Shows Feds Slashed Sage Grouse Protections in New Plans
16 million Acres Designated 'Most Important' Receive No Protections
Contact: Erik Molvar (307) 399-7910
LARAMIE, Wyo. – A new report released today by WildEarth Guardians reveals that agencies shrank sage grouse Priority Habitat boundaries in their recently proposed sage grouse plan amendments by huge margins. The report, titled The Shrinking Geography of Sage Grouse Conservation, features rangewide Geographic Information System (GIS) data analysis on the status of proposed sage grouse habitat protections, and compares protected areas to remaining key population hotspots. Almost 16 million acres designated as Priority Areas for Conservation and termed “the most important areas needed for maintaining sage-grouse representation, redundancy, and resilience across the landscape” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have mysteriously disappeared from the Priority Habitat areas proposed in U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management sage grouse plans.
“Apparently the federal agencies thought that they could sneak huge reductions in the acreage of Priority Habitats past the public by releasing all the plans at the same time,” said Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist with WildEarth Guardians. “But we caught them, and in plenty of time to alert the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the dirty tricks land-use agencies are using to weaken grouse protections.”
The acreage of Priority Areas for Conservation left unprotected across the range of the sage grouse is bigger than the state of South Carolina. Nevada suffered the biggest reductions in Priority Habitats, leaving the state with isolated and fragmented protected areas. Nevada’s formerly robust system of interconnected Priority Habitats was slashed, with just 53% of the originally proposed Priority Habitat gaining the elevated protection status in federal sage grouse plans. Idaho and Utah also took big cuts, slashing 3.8 million acres and 2 million acres of Priority Habitats respectively.
“In Nevada and Utah in particular, the new system of Priority Habitat areas is composed of tiny, isolated, and fragmented habitats that are now increasingly vulnerable to losing their sage grouse populations,” Molvar said. “These drastic reductions in Priority Habitat radically increase the likelihood of extinction, and unless they’re corrected they will only underscore the need for Endangered Species Act protections.”
In Montana, Idaho, and Nevada, about one-fourth of the most densely populated sage grouse habitats are now excluded from the Priority Habitat system, receiving little protection from destructive activities including oil and gas drilling and heavy livestock grazing that can destroy habitats and cause long-term sage grouse losses.
The cuts appear to have originated in individual state offices of the Bureau of Land Management. “These major alterations of sage grouse Priority Habitat designations took place behind closed doors, in back-room deals that serve local political interests, not the sage grouse,” said Molvar. “The responsibility to fix these problems and restore the credibility of the federal sage grouse plans now falls upon administration officials in Washington.”
Download the report and view the accompanying website with habitat maps and statistics at www.wildearthguardians.org/shrinking_sage_grouse_geography.
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