Environmentalists unleash sage grouse in lawsuits fighting Interior oil-and-gas leases

Environmentalists played the sage-grouse card Monday with two lawsuits aimed at stopping the Trump administration from expanding oil-and-gas development onto public lands identified as species habitat.

The environmental groups argued that the Interior Department has disregarded the 2015 Greater sage-grouse conservation plan reached under former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, designed to protect the birds without listing them as endangered.

“Trump can’t ignore the law to fulfill the fossil fuel industry’s wish list,” said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has moved to streamline and simplify the permitting process on new lease sales, directing the Bureau of Land Management to conduct quarterly auctions in accordance with President Trump’s goal of “American energy dominance.”

But the groups argue that Mr. Zinke has violated the 2015 land-use plans under which the Interior Department agreed to focus its oil-and-gas leasing outside sage-grouse habitat, which encompasses millions of acres spread across 10 Western states.

Dave Chadwick, Montana Wildlife Federation executive director, said the sage-grouse initiatives were “hard-won agreements developed over years of work by Montanans and other Westerners.”

“The plans preserve habitat for the sage-grouse while protecting public access to public land, and maintaining oil-and-gas development, ranching and other land uses,” he said in a statement. “Maybe some people in the Interior Department now disagree with those plans, but that doesn’t mean they can just ignore them.”

The 2015 conservation plan split the environmental movement between wildlife groups that supported the initiative and those who argued it fell short, which may explain why two separate coalitions filed similar challenges against the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management on the same day.

The first lawsuit was submitted in U.S. District Court in Idaho by the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and Advocates for the West, groups that have been more critical of the Obama-era sage-grouse compromise.

Targeted are oil-and-gas lease auctions in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

The second lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Montana by Earthjustice, challenges sales in Montana, Nevada and Wyoming on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation, Wilderness Society, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and the Montana Wildlife Federation.

Erik Molvar of the Western Watersheds Project said the Trump administration has flouted the only thing he liked about the Obama-era sage-grouse initiatives.

Those plans were “riddled with loopholes and giveaways that were the result of political collaboration, but the one thing they got right was the commitment to prioritize oil and gas leasing and development outside the priority habitats,” Mr. Molvar said. “And that’s what the Trump administration is now going back on.”

His organization and three others also announced Monday that they had reached an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the threatened Gunnison sage grouse, whose habitat lies in Colorado and Utah.

Under the settlement, the environmental groups have agreed to suspend their legal fight while the agency takes 30 months to prepare a recovery plan for the Gunnison sage grouse.

“There is no doubt that the Gunnison sage grouse should be listed as endangered,” said Talasi Brooks, Advocates of the West staff attorney, in a statement. “But given the severity of threats the few remaining birds continue to face, our agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provides a viable path to recovery for the species.”