Green groups went to court Monday over the Bureau of Land Management’s amended plans for managing greater sage grouse habitat across the West, arguing the agency’s management of the iconic birds would “inexorably accelerate” their extinction.
BLM finalized new management plans in December 2025 that ease restrictions on federal land for protecting the grouse whose survival on shriveling habitat frequently conflicts with livestock grazing, oil and gas drilling, and other development.
Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Gallatin Wildlife Association, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Rocky Mountain Wild, the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians sued BLM in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, asking the court to reverse the new management plans and require further environmental review.
“After a decade of tepid sage grouse protections, now the Bureau of Land Management is completely abandoning its responsibility to manage commercial activities in sage grouse habitats to allow the birds to survive,” Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and executive director of Western Watersheds, said in a statement.
