LARAMIE, WY-Amid escalating concerns about the potential for listing the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, the species has taken on a central role in the battle over the Bush Energy Policy in Wyoming. Dr. Clait E. Braun, one of the world's foremost experts on sage grouse, has just submitted extensive comments criticizing past management of the species under the BLM's Great Divide and Pinedale land management plans, and calling for stronger measures to protect the sage grouse from the impacts of oil and gas development in their upcoming plan revisions. At the same time, conservation groups have filed a protest of the Powder River Basin EIS on the grounds that the BLM has violated federal law by failing to analyze the effects of the massive coalbed methane development on sage grouse populations in the Basin.

Often referred to as the "spotted owl of the sagebrush sea," the sage grouse may be on the road to federal threatened or endangered status. "The overall distribution of sage grouse has declined by at least 50 percent and its abundance has plummeted by 80 to 90 percent. While Wyoming has been considered to have the largest remaining population, numbers have also decreased throughout the state and loss of habitat connectivity caused by intensive oil and gas development will further disrupt populations and threaten the species," said Dr. Braun, one of the leading authorities on sage grouse. Dr. Braun's analysis of existing data from Wyoming and the BLM's plans to encourage development with cursory consideration of harm to sage grouse populations led him to suggest that the BLM's policies "will likely hasten federal listing of the species as threatened or endangered."

Oil and gas development has negative impacts on sage grouse by destroying traditional breeding and nesting grounds, fragmenting habitat with roads, wells, and pipelines, and creating noise that interferes with breeding activities. "The impacts of full development of gas and oil with no planned mitigation or large areas which are set aside for sage grouse will be devastating to local populations." said Braun. "Such development will reduce or eliminate habitat connectivity, reducing the viability of sage grouse across Wyoming."

Braun's comments on the Great Divide and Pinedale plans pointed out that current BLM measures to protect sage grouse from oil and gas impacts are woefully inadequate. "The BLM's present quarter-mile buffer around active leks is scientifically unsound, and the available data indicate that such a weak measure is a prescription for local population extinction. To be realistic, a 3-mile buffer from surface disturbance is needed to protect to sage grouse during the breeding and nesting season," said Braun. "Further, essentially no attention has been given to habitats used by sage grouse in the winter, the most important time of year for the grouse. There is an immediate and urgent need to identify and protect these important habitats."

In the Powder River Basin, the BLM's cavalier handling of sage grouse protection has led to a legal challenge brought on behalf of American Lands Alliance and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "The BLM made no effort to determine the status of sage grouse or the impacts of 51,000 coalbed methane wells on this bird in the Powder River Basin," said Marc Fink of the Western Environmental Law Center, who is representing the conservation groups. "It's entirely likely that the coalbed methane boom will be the end of sage grouse in the Powder River Basin, and yet the BLM has done little to prevent the potential decline."