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Recommendation to Protect Sage Grouse
For Immediate Release LARAMIE—Conservationists were disappointed but not surprised by news that this afternoon the Mountain-Prairie Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will recommend that the Department of Interior deny protection to the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. “Sage grouse have suffered precipitous declines in recent decades,” said Mark Salvo, Director of the Sagebrush Sea Campaign. “A listing would have required the federal government to protect sagebrush habitat where the sage grouse lives. By not listing the species, damaging activities will be allowed to continue on much of the sagebrush steppe, to the detriment of sage grouse and scores of other wildlife species.” The historic range of the sage grouse closely conformed to the distribution of sagebrush in sixteen Western states and three Canadian provinces, but the grouse has since disappeared from Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and British Columbia . Sage grouse habitat shows a strong overlap with oil and gas basins in the West, and oil and gas drilling is a leading threat to the survival of sage grouse. “The oil and gas industry has the directional drilling technology to produce oil and gas while siting roads and well pads outside sensitive breeding and nesting habitats,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist for Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “By giving the grouse breeding areas the two- to three-mile buffer recommended by scientists, oil and gas development could be compatible with sage grouse conservation, but the federal government has so far refused to require this common-sense measure.” Sage grouse have elaborate courtship rituals that take place at the same sites year after year, and the noise and disturbance from nearby drilling makes it nearly impossible for the males’ booming mating calls to be heard by their intended mates. Overgrazing, sagebrush removal, and West Nile virus also threaten the grouse. Sage grouse have been disappearing since 1900, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has acknowledged that numbers have declined between 69 and 99 percent in recent decades. The total sage grouse population, estimated at 140,000 individuals, represents only about eight percent of historic numbers. "We would be happy to see the states step up to the plate and protect the sage grouse," said Erin Robertson, Staff Biologist of Center for Native Ecosystems. "But they haven't yet, and the health of the sagebrush ecosystem continues to decline while the states do little more than talk.” The Fish and Wildlife Service is required to make a final decision on whether to propose Endangered Species Act listing for the grouse by the end of the month.
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