The Trump administration is proposing revised plans for managing greater sage grouse across millions of acres of public lands in eight Western states that would potentially ease restrictions on oil and natural gas drilling, mining activity and livestock grazing.
The Bureau of Land Management’s latest blueprint updates plans for eight states that the Biden administration completed in November but never finalized before President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January. It calls for changes to criteria that would have prompted restrictive actions to be taken when populations of the Western bird drop below a predetermined level.
BLM, which oversees an estimated 67 million acres of sage grouse habitat, said in documents outlining the proposed changes that “several states expressed concern” with using the “targeted annual warning system model” to trigger the stronger regulations. That model was devised by the U.S. Geological Survey in conjunction with state wildlife biologists. But the states want BLM to “use models maintained and controlled by state wildlife agencies for sage grouse population calculations,” and that’s what the bureau is proposing to do.
More specific changes include altering protected sage grouse habitat management areas in Utah to “minimize” grouse habitat designations outside of areas already identified by the state. In Nevada, the proposed changes would ease development restrictions in general habitat management areas for “major rights of way.”
