Greater Sage-Grouse ESA Listing Warranted but Precluded

It was a busy day for the sage-grouse on Friday, March 4, when multiple federal agencies issued a series of announcements and decisions concerning both the Greater- and Gunnison Sage-grouse species.

In a development with the strongest local connection, the US Fish and Wildlife Service learned that it had been granted an extension until Sept. 15 to determine whether the Gunnison Sage-grouse should be listed for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Last March the agency filed notice in federal court that it would reconsider its 2006 decision to deny the protection to the bird after an investigation revealed that Bush administration officials had interfered with federal biologists’ decision-making for multiple endangered species, including the Gunnison Sage-grouse.

Several months later in August, San Miguel County, joined by local conservation group Sheep Mountain Alliance and a coalition of seven other concerned environmental organizations, filed an agreement in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that settled their lawsuit against the USFWS for its 2006 decision. That action committed the agency to prepare a new listing decision by a court-ordered deadline of June 30, 2010.

“It was a pretty tight deadline,” said Grand Junction-based fish and wildlife biologist Dan Reinkensmeyer, who indicated that all other terms of the settlement agreement remained the same.

“We need more time to consider all the information we received,” he continued.

“We’re working with the U.S. Geological Survey and modeling some nesting habitat,” he added.

“We’re trying to let that progress a little more to work into our finding.”

“It was a tight deadline,” agreed Leigh Robertson, coordinator of the San Miguel Basin Gunnison Sage-grouse Working Group.

Still, “I guess I’m a little disappointed because they already did this once,” she said of the delay, referring to the USFWS biologists’ former determination that ultimately got quashed.

“I think sometimes agencies can take so much time studying stuff … in the meantime in the San Miguel Basin the birds numbers are going down.”

In other announcements striking farther afield than the San Miguel Basin the USFWS announced several findings concerning the Greater Sage-grouse.

The first indicated that the species is warranted for protection under the ESA based upon accumulated scientific data and new peer-reviewed information and analysis, but that listing the Greater Sage-grouse at this time is precluded by the need to first address other species with higher priority, a press release stated.

The agency also announced that populations of the species in Nevada and California known as the Bi-State population (formerly referred to as the Mono Basin population) met the necessary criteria for recognition as a Distinct Population Segment under the ESA.

“We conclude the Bi-State population of Greater Sage-grouse is markedly separate from other populations of the Greater Sage-grouse based on genetic data from mitochondrial DNA sequencing and from nuclear microsatellites,” agency staff wrote in a 103-page finding published in the Federal Register.

As a result, the Bi-State population will also be placed on the list of species that are candidates for ESA protection.

Finally, the USWFS announced in the same finding that based on a thorough evaluation of the best scientific information available, including new genetic analyses, it found no evidence to support the recognition of separate eastern and western subspecies of the Greater Sage-grouse described in the 1940s and based on comparisons of a limited number of specimens.

As a result, the agency determined that the western subspecies was not warranted for listing under the ESA it had been petitioned to consider.

As with all candidates for listing, the USFWS will annually review the status of the range-wide Greater Sage-grouse and the Bi-State population, proposing them for listing as funding and workload permit.

However, because the Bi-State population faces more immediate and severe threats than the range-wide Greater Sage-grouse, it has been assigned a higher listing priority number.

In conjunction with the USFWS announcements Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar also announced in a separate press release that the federal government would expand its efforts to protect open lands that are important to the survival of the Bi-State population and the Greater Sage-grouse range-wide while at the same time guiding and managing new conventional and renewable energy projects to reduce impacts on the species.

“The sage-grouse’s decline reflects the extent to which open land in the West has been developed in the last century,” said Salazar in the press release.

“This development has provided important benefits, but we must find common-sense ways of protecting, restoring, and reconnecting the Western lands that are most important to the species’ survival while responsibly developing much-needed energy resources. Voluntary conservation agreements, federal financial and technical assistance and other partnership incentives can play a key role in this effort,” he continued.

Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey, whose agency manages more Greater Sage-grouse habitat than any other government agency, said that the BLM will issue guidance that will expand the use of new science and mapping technologies to improve land-use planning and develop additional measures to conserve sage-grouse habitat while ensuring that energy production, recreational access and other uses of federal lands continue as appropriate, the press release stated.

Robertson was pleased to learn that the new BLM guidance will also address the Gunnison Sage-grouse.

“It will give the Gunnison Sage-grouse a little more protection,” she said.

Robertson said that the Greater Sage-grouse decisions taken by the USFWS suggested to her that come September its Gunnison cousin might finally get the protection that agency scientists thought it should have several years ago.

“I would find it hard for them not to list it, just looking at the science without the politics involved,” she said.

“If they list the Greaters there’s no way they could logically not this for the Gunnisons,” she continued.

Reinkensmeyer didn’t necessarily agree.

“Obviously it’s a different species,” he said, elaborating that while the two species are very similar, some of the threats to them are very different.

“It’s not a one-to-one comparison,” he said.

“There’s lots of good things being done for the Gunnisons,” he said. “We’re still looking at all those things as we go through this.”