WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, December 11, 2008
Bush Administration Official Hints Sage-Grouse May be Thrown Under the Bus - Again

Declining Populations May be Ignored for Second Time in Three Years
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

PHOENIX - A Bush Administration official has indicated that the Department of Interior may recommend against protecting greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for the second time in three years, despite the continued decline of sage-grouse populations and increasing threats to the species' existence.

"It appears that the Bush Administration might be just now tying the bow on another extraordinary gift to the livestock and oil and gas industries," said Mark Salvo, Director of the Sagebrush Sea Campaign for WildEarth Guardians. "Who is surprised by this behavior anymore?"

News reports indicate that Assistant Interior Secretary Stephen Allred commented this week that the Department of Interior may recommend against listing sage-grouse under the ESA. President Bush visited the Department of Interior for the first time in his eight years in the White House on September 9, where he learned firsthand about the potential impact of protecting sage-grouse on oil and gas development and other resource extraction.

This latest development also follows a series of Administration efforts to weaken the ESA this year, including a new rule to allow federal agencies to determine for themselves whether a project might negatively affect a listed species and administrative action intended to limit ESA protections to a listed species’ current range, rather than its historic or potential range.

Human activities have decimated sage-grouse habitat in twelve western states. Livestock grazing, gas and oil drilling, agricultural conversion, application of herbicides and pesticides, unnatural fire, urban sprawl, mining, off-road vehicle use, and the placement and construction of utility corridors, roads and fences have fragmented, degraded and eliminated sage-grouse range. Greater sage-grouse distribution has decreased by 56 percent, while rangewide abundance has been reduced by as much as 93 percent from historic levels.

“George W. Bush leaves a legacy of misinformation and obstructing protections for species on the brink,” said Salvo. “We look forward to working with the Obama Administration to reverse the destructive policies of the Bush Administration that ignore science and show contempt for endangered species.”

WildEarth Guardians’ Sagebrush Sea Campaign works to protect and restore the vast sagebrush-steppe landscape in the American West. The Campaign and twenty other conservation, sporting and animal welfare organizations petitioned to protect greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act in 2003. The Campaign released a report in October this year that found that more than 80 percent of sage-grouse habitat on public and private lands in the West is threatened by resource use and related factors (www.sagebrushsea.org/land_shrinking_sagebrush_sea.htm).

A factsheet on greater sage-grouse is available here.