Garfield County officials: BLM sage-grouse plans take turn for worse
Garfield County officials said Monday the Bureau of Land Management is considering even-stricter measures to protect greater sage-grouse than previously contemplated, rather than listening to concerns the county and others have raised.
As a cooperating agency, the county got an advance look Friday at the revised proposal the agency is now considering.
“It is very dramatic in terms of the changes (from a draft BLM proposal) that are being proposed,” Fred Jarman, the county’s community development director, told county commissioners Monday.
Jarman and Garfield Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said the proposed measures are the result of directives coming from Washington, D.C.
“It’s really heavy-handed government from the top,” Jankovsky said.
But Erik Molvar with WildEarth Guardians said if the BLM is considering better protections for the bird, that would be a welcome development.
“We’re hoping that the BLM has markedly stronger plans in regards to oil and gas development, in regards to livestock,” as the plans pertain to protecting the bird from such impacts, he said.
The BLM and U.S. Forest Service are revising resource management plans in 11 states in an effort to try to help prevent the need for the greater sage-grouse to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service faces a Sept. 30 deadline to determine if such protection is warranted. It’s conducting a status review after a 2010 finding that the protection is warranted but precluded by higher-priority efforts involving other species.
Garfield officials didn’t give many specifics Monday about additional protections being considered by the BLM, due to confidentiality terms applying to cooperating agencies prior to the plans’ release. But Jankovsky said under the measures the agency is considering, requirements already being considered for priority habitat would be “now just as draconian” in general habitat where the bird isn’t even found.
Jarman said the BLM is completely ignoring local and regional planning efforts even though it’s required to address discrepancies between them and the federal effort.
Jankovsky called Garfield County’s efforts “a waste of three years of our time.”
He said when it comes to public lands issues, it feels to him like Garfield County “is a colony of the East Coast and Washington, D.C.,” with decisions being made far away just as decisions pertaining to the American colonies once were made in London.
BLM spokesman David Boyd said the agency can’t comment on the plans until they are final. He said they are expected to be released by early June.
But according to a BLM statement he released, “When final, the plans will be science-based and reflect years of collaboration among federal, state and local partners.”
The statement added, “We have confidence that these plans will not only benefit the greater sage-grouse, but will also sustain the West’s sagebrush habitat that supports ranching, hunting, outdoor recreation and hundreds of other wildlife species such as elk, mule deer and pronghorn.”
The state of Colorado also is a cooperating agency in the BLM’s planning process. John Swartout, Gov. John Hickenlooper’s policy advisor on the issue, said the state also is bound by confidentiality provisions not to publicly share what the BLM has indicated it is considering in its final plans. But cooperative agencies continue to have a voice in the matter before final decisions are made, he said.
“We’re in the process of talking about it, negotiating about it. People from different cooperators, from different interests are either pushing back or suggesting other alternatives,” he said.
He said cooperators are trying to maintain the integrity of preliminary plans that were widely accepted as being something they could live with. The state of Colorado is concerned with aspects of the near-final plans that are inconsistent with that approach, “but we’re in a process to try to resolve those,” he said.
He said the process is now “being influenced by national guidance, and we don’t think that fits.”
He said the challenge arises because the BLM told states to come up with their own plans the agency could use in those states, but it’s also trying to build some consistency among those 11 plans.
“It’s not easy,” he said.
Garfield County is worried about potential impacts of sage-grouse measures on oil and gas development, livestock grazing and other activities. Molvar said the need for strong protections for the birds was underscored by a recent study.
It “would indicate sage-grouse are in real trouble across their range” and that stronger measures than had been previously proposed are going to be necessary if the BLM is going to succeed in having protections strong enough to substitute for an Endangered Species Act listing, Molvar said.
That study is principally authored by researcher Edward Garton, and is an update of work he did in 2011. The update found that the outlook for the greater sage-grouse across the West is even bleaker than it was then, Molvar said.
He said the study found that in a region including habitat in Wyoming and northwest Colorado, there’s a 65 percent chance that the bird will fall below a minimal viable population in a century, “which is very scary” because that region is considered the bird’s national stronghold.
“The bar is now higher, I guess you could say” for the BLM, Molvar said.
Garfield commissioners are working on finalizing a letter supporting a bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., that would prohibit the Fish and Wildlife Service from listing the greater sage-grouse for protection while letting states carry out their own conservation plans or defer to the federal government for six years.
According to the draft Garfield letter of support, Colorado Parks and Wildlife last year reported that a lek, or grouse mating grounds, on a reclaimed natural gas pad contained 31 strutting males. The letter said that finding came “despite natural gas being listed as a primary threat to habitat fragmentation and species decline.”
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