Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s order this week signaling the agency wants to reopen greater sage grouse management plans developed by the Biden administration was a victory for Western Republican governors who delayed them until President Donald Trump took office.
The governor’s offices in Wyoming and Montana, which collectively oversee tens of millions of acres of grouse habitat, celebrated the new approach, which included Burgum’s secretarial order signed Monday titled “Unleashing American Energy” that directed Interior assistant secretaries to develop plans to revisit the sage grouse blueprint devised by the Biden-era Bureau of Land Management, and suggest potential ways to reopen and possibly redo them.
In Wyoming, which is home to nearly a third of the sage grouse population, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon’s office told POLITICO’s E&E News this week that state officials are working with the new administration on potentially significant changes to the plans covering millions of acres of federals lands there.
In a separate statement Thursday, Gordon praised Burgum’s secretarial order as it relates to greater sage grouse management, as well as other issues like coal mining, calling it “a refreshing change of direction,” and taking some of the credit for it.
