Oil firms’ battle with sage grouse rises again
Energy projects are delayed by conservation plan
WASHINGTON — The greater sage grouse, famed for its elaborate courtship rituals, has bedeviled Texas oil and gas companies trying to drill in the rocky high plains of the western United States for more than a decade.
The tension seemingly should have dissipated in September, when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that her agency would not place the grouse on the federal endangered species list and effectively block drilling across the ground bird’s expansive habitat.
But an alternative federal conservation plan has set off a whole new fight, as Republicans lampoon the Obama administration as forsaking western economies through overly restrictive rules.
The Bureau of Land Management, a branch of the Interior Department, has identified 67 million acres of federal lands as sage grouse territory, capping the amount of that land that can be drilled for gas, grazed by cattle or sited for a wind farm at less than 3.5 million acres.
Oil and gas lease sales across the West have been delayed while the new conservation rules are finalized.
“Virtually everyone agrees this magnificent bird should be protected,” said Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho. “I’m frankly disgusted with the way the federal government has gone about this.
“States have made solid good faith efforts for these birds.”
The greater sage grouse is perhaps best known for its courtship dance in which males inflate the yellow pouch on their necks to impress females.
At the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. sage grouse population was estimated at up to 16 million. Their presence in the American West was once so great that Teddy Roosevelt is said to have watched the sky turn black with grouse over a morning cup of coffee at a campsite in Wyoming, said Brian Rutledge of the Audubon Society.
But the sage brush in which the grouse nest was decimated by overgrazing of cattle and sheep throughout the 1900s and later by oil and gas drilling, mining and other development.
With the sage brush went the grouse. Current estimates put the grouse population at less than 500,000.
“We know what to do and in many cases we just don’t want to do it,” Rutledge said. “That’s to minimize the destruction of the sage brush habitat.”
A recent uptick in population counts of the grouse has given some hope for its survival, but conservationists worry the numbers are an anomaly.
As with past attempts to protect the grouse, the new federal plan is disputed. Lawsuits to block the interior department have been filed by groups representing oil companies, miners and cattle ranchers, along with state attorneys general, including those from Idaho and Nevada. Western lawmakers complain about a far-off bureaucracy making rules for a region it doesn’t know or understand.
“There’s been other lengthy battles over a species, … but this one is particularly high profile,” said Tom Jackson, an attorney who represents energy companies for the Houston law firm Baker Botts. “This particular species is relatively widespread and shows up in a lot of different places. That’s going to result in land use conflicts.”
Lawsuits to block the Interior Department have been filed by groups representing oil companies, miners and cattle ranchers, along with state attorneys general, including those from Idaho and Nevada.
Western lawmakers complain about a far-off bureaucracy making rules for a region it doesn’t know or understand.
Republicans are attempting to block the plan by inserting a condition in an appropriations bill that prevents the Fish and Wildlife Service from putting the sage grouse on the endangered species list in the future.
Listing the sage grouse as endangered is not supported by every environmental group, some of whom recall the political backlash when the northern spotted owl was listed in 1990 — limiting logging and hurting rural economies in the Northwest.
The sage grouse was an obscure species for many years, so even some conservationists are surprised the bird has inspired so much passion.
Steve Holmer of the American Bird Conservancy, wonders whether it doesn’t have something to do with its courtship rituals. “Maybe it’s the dancing,” he said.