A federal judge has ruled for a third time that the Interior Department failed to protect greater sage grouse habitat when it issued oil and gas lease sales spanning more than a million acres of public lands in Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas.
On Friday, Chief Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana found that Interior failed to prioritize development outside of the bird’s habitat, as required under agency policy established in 2015. He ordered the lease sales to be tossed out.
The ruling resolves the third phase of litigation before Morris that challenged a series of lease sales held in the Great Plains from 2019 and 2020, as the first Trump administration sought to expand domestic oil and gas drilling. The new leasing came after the Obama administration introduced protections for sage grouse on public lands in an effort to keep Interior from having to list the bird as endangered.
Morris, an Obama appointee, found Interior failed to consider how oil and gas development on the leases would fragment key sage grouse breeding grounds. While he acknowledged the economic consequences of the ruling, Morris also said the failure by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management to avoid development in key habitat warranted vacatur, or a decision to scrap the lease sales.
