Proposed Greater Sage-grouse Plan Amendments Will Continue Bird’s Extinction Spiral

Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its final Environmental Impact Statement and proposed plan amendments for Greater Sage-Grouse Rangewide Planning, laying out the blueprint of the agency’s intentions for 65 million acres of the bird’s public lands habitat but falling far short of what science says the birds need to avoid extinction. Conservation groups expressed alarm at the double-whammy of weak plans and the likely threats posed to the sage-grouse by the incoming presidential administration’s “Drill, baby, drill,” agenda.

The proposed plans fail to remedy the defects identified in the draft plans, including failing to provide scientifically adequate lek buffers, disturbance caps, or even consistent definitions of which habitats need protecting. Wyoming, where the majority of the birds remain, continues to have indefensibly weak protections. The plans also fail to provide meaningful and enforceable standards to ensure livestock grazing doesn’t deplete vegetation communities essential for sage grouse survival.

“These plans fail to address the inadequacies of the 2019 greater sage-grouse plans that landed the administration in court,” said Sarah Stellberg, Staff Attorney with Advocates for the West.

“It’s clear that these compromise plans aren’t going to save sage-grouse from their continued downward spiral towards extinction,” said Greta Anderson, Deputy Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Letting anti-conservation states and extractive interests get their way above all else is something we expect to have to fight in the next administration, and it’s disappointing that this is what the Biden administration is leaving us with as well. What a squandered opportunity.”

“This plan will continue the sage grouse’s grim progress towards extinction,” said Randi Spivak, Public Lands Policy Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The small improvements made are still grossly inadequate to recover the species and don’t reflect the abundance of science telling us what’s necessary to save the sage-grouse. It’s too bad it took years to get to this deeply flawed plan.”

“We are disappointed that the plans provide the highest level of protection for only four million acres of priority sagebrush habitat,” said Steve Holmer of American Bird Conservancy. “The 2015 plans protect 11 million acres of sagebrush focal areas so this is not a step forward given the history of exceptions routinely being granted to drill in priority grouse habitat.”

Background

In 2019, Advocates for the West filed suit against Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and the BLM in Idaho federal court over their decisions to gut protections for greater sage-grouse across millions of acres of public land in the West. Our victory in that base blocked the Trump BLM from weakening the more protective 2015 Obama sage-grouse plans, which remain in effect, and our victories spurred the Biden administration to launch a new BLM land use planning process to promote landscape-scale protections for sage-grouse habitats.

In March 2024, the Biden administration released draft plans for BLM lands which fall woefully short of what is needed to stem the bird’s downward population spiral.

At Issue

Since the 2015 plans went into effect, sage-grouse populations have seen major declines throughout the species’ range.