Sage-Grouse

Federal authorities must apply more scrutiny to potential impacts on greater sage grouse across hundreds of oil and natural gas leases in Wyoming and Montana before authorizing new drilling, a federal judge in Idaho has ruled. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush ruled that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), under former President Trump, failed…

Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon indicated Wednesday he would review an ongoing program to protect sage grouse habitat, but he said the program’s primary elements and protections would remain unchanged.

The Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Thursday revised another vestige of the Obama era, this time releasing amendments and a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for protecting greater sage grouse habitat in 11 western states.

Whether the omnibus bipartisan agreement between the Obama administration and many western state governors for protecting sage grouse habitat is effective and working seems split along partisan lines, based on testimony to a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

The Department of Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has finalized a plan to protect a unique subset of greater sage-grouse with habitat in west-central Nevada and eastern California, building on protections the federal government rolled out last year.

In advance of a much-anticipated federal Interior Department announcement due Tuesday, governors in Oregon and Colorado last week issued executive orders to upgrade conservation efforts for the greater sage grouse.