Do You Support Opening Sage Grouse Habitat to Oil and Gas Drilling?

What’s the story?

• The Interior Department has lifted restrictions aimed at protecting the sage grouse bird, which could open lands in the West to increased grazing and oil and gas drilling.

What are both sides saying?

Supporters

• Former interior secretary Ryan Zinke kick-started a revision process on sage grouse management plans in 2017, asking state governments to examine ways to protect the bird but also allow for “local economic opportunities."
• Acting interior secretary David Bernhardt said in a statement Friday that "[m]onths of close coordination and cooperation with state governments in Wyoming, Nevada, California, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Colorado has gone into the development of today's decision.”

He continued: "The plans adopted today show that listening to and working with our neighbors at the state and local levels of government is the key to long-term conservation and to ensuring the viability of local communities across the West.”

Detractors

• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said the change was a gift to the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment.

"As part of its ongoing campaign to hand over public lands to fossil fuel companies, this administration is rolling back sage grouse protections that many stakeholders created together through a long and deliberative process," Grijalva said. "It seems clear that Acting Secretary David Bernhardt's clients stand to gain more than anyone else from this revision."

• Nada Culver, senior counsel for the Wilderness Society, said in a statement on Friday that she worries the changes will undo the mechanisms that had been protecting the grouse.
• “We now have plans that are less protective from the biggest threats to sage grouse, and those protections that are remaining are less certain to be applied and do not work together across the landscape,” Culver said.

“So, of course, we’re concerned and the grouse, if they got to weigh in, would be concerned too.”

What do you think?

Do you support opening sage grouse habitat to grazing and drilling? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo credit: iStockphoto.com / milehightraveler)