The Trump administration released draft plans that could strip away protections for the greater sage grouse on about 50 million acres of public lands across the West. The Obama- and Biden-era greater sage grouse proposals were intended to prevent the extinction of the iconic dancing bird.
This week’s document, which opens an opportunity for public comments, presents numerous substantial revisions that “gut the plans, including giving states authority to decide when and where protections apply,” says the Center for Biological Diversity. The draft plan applies to greater sage grouse habitat on Bureau of Land Management lands in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming.
“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is soliciting comments on significant changes to the Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) for Greater Sage-grouse Rangewide Planning released in November 2024,” says BLM in announcing the draft. “The environmental consequences of the proposed changes have been analyzed as part of the RMPA/environmental impact statement (EIS) process. Following consideration of any comments on these changes, the BLM will issue Records of Decision (ROD) for the Approved RMPAs for Idaho, Montana/Dakotas, Nevada/California, Utah, and Wyoming.
“The BLM has determined that it will clarify and make changes to the adaptive management language in the Proposed RMPAs for Idaho, Montana/Dakotas, Nevada/California, Utah, and Wyoming to better align with state policies and programs to manage sage-grouse populations.”
“The Trump administration is obliterating the only thing standing between the greater sage grouse and extinction,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center . “Trump’s cronies in the mining and fossil fuel industries have been licking their chops over stripping away these protections ever since the election. He’s giving these rich donors what they want and moving to kill off one of the American West’s most iconic birds.”
Because of precipitous population declines, the greater sage grouse was under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act in the early 2010s. Rather than protect the bird under the Endangered Species Act, revised land management plans in 2015 implemented needed protections from extractive uses throughout the range of the greater sage grouse across 10 states.
These protections limited where mining, oil and gas, transmission lines, and other heavy industry could operate within priority habitat areas. They specified limits on the amount of permittable disturbance within these habitat areas, which were designated to protect the sensitive birds and their mating grounds, called leks.
The fossil fuel, energy transmission and mining industries continued to pressure the BLM to weaken these plans, which were again revised in 2018 and in 2024, says the Center. The iconic birds’ populations continue to spiral down; the U.S. Geological Survey found that the population declined nearly 80% between 1968 and 2023.
Trump’s proposed plan amendments “would hand the states discretion to amend or waive some of the protections, making the process rife with conflicts of interest due to the influence of extractive industries,” says the Center. “The plans would also allow for new rights of way within important habitat areas, paving the way for destructive projects like the Greenlink North transmission line through the heart of central Nevada.”
“Greater sage grouse are a vital part of the Great Basin and intermountain West and they’re teetering on the brink of an extinction spiral,” said Spivak. “Trump is putting these beautiful dancing birds in his crosshairs, throwing open the doors of our public lands to more mining and fossil fuels. We intend to stop him.”
Protecting the greater sage grouse and its habitat benefits hundreds of other species that depend on the Sagebrush Sea ecosystem. This includes pygmy rabbits, pronghorns, elk, mule deer, golden eagles, native trout, and migratory and resident birds.