The Trump administration weakened protections on Monday for the vulnerable greater sage grouse, making it easier for oil and gas drilling, mining and grazing operations to take place on about 50 million acres of land across eight Western states.
The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees Western lands critical to the sage grouse habitat, said the proposed changes would make more space available for development while continuing to protect “key habitats” for the bird across approximately 65 million acres of land.
“We are strengthening American energy security while ensuring the sage grouse continues to thrive,” said Bill Groffy, the acting director of the bureau, which is part of the Interior Department.
The state of being of the sage grouse, a large chicken-like bird known for the males’ flamboyant courtship dance, is considered an indicator of the health of an ecosystem that spans 11 Western states. The greater sage grouse depends on healthy sage brush grasslands, which also support hundreds of species of smaller birds along with pronghorn, mule deer and elk.
Described by the explorers Lewis and Clark, the sage grouse once numbered as many as 16 million. But development, agriculture and wildfires have caused that number to plummet by 80 percent according to a 2021 report by the U.S. Geological Survey, the science agency for the Interior Department. Half of that decline has happened just since 2002.
The bird has been at the center of disputes between the oil and gas industry and conservationists for more than a decade. The new plan is expected to set off a fresh round of legal challenges.
“There will be a lot more oil and gas development, transmission lines and other harmful activities to remaining sage grouse populations,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
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The sage grouse “are on an extinction trajectory right now, and this plan really furthers that,” she said.
Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, an environmental group, said the Trump administration changes “are designed to strip away any habitat protections that might possibly get in the way of the industrial-scale exploitation of public lands inhabited by sage grouse.”
The Biden administration set protections for the sage grouse in Oregon and Colorado, which were not changed on Monday. The plan put forward by the Trump administration covers state plans that the Biden administration never finalized for Utah, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nevada, Wyoming and California.
It eliminates a targeted annual warning system that had been designed to detect declines in local sage grouse populations before they became irreversible. It also removes protections from more than four million acres of sage grouse habitat in Utah, and removes scientific standards that had been used to determine how high grass must be for nesting habitat.
Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, praised the plan, saying it gives the state greater control. Wyoming is home to about one-third of the remaining sage grouse population.
“Wyoming has been a leader in the sage grouse conservation for six decades,” Mr. Gordon said, adding that the state will continue to invest in protections “alongside responsible development in Wyoming.”
Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, wrote on X that the new plan was “a win for Western states — protecting important wildlife habitats while expanding opportunities for energy and mineral development.”
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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