'Hammer still hangs over us,' ranchers' group says

By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI

Capital Press

The federal government's decision not to list the greater sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species has not dispelled rancher concerns about the future of public lands grazing.

"The hammer still hangs over us," said Skye Krebs, president of the Public Lands Council, which represents ranchers.

The Interior Department's announcement that listing the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act is "warranted but precluded" won't result in immediate restrictions on grazing.

However, that possibility remains open as the bird's status is periodically reviewed.

The situation would certainly be worse for ranchers if the sage grouse was listed under ESA, Krebs said.

Krebs said he hoped evidence of the bird's stable population would convince the government that listing is unwarranted -- rather than precluded by the need to study higher-priority species.

"To get the non-decision is concerning," he said.

The historic habitat of the sage grouse has been reduced by 50 percent and the bird's population has fallen by 90 percent in the past century, said Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar during a March 5 press conference announcing the decision.

However, conservation efforts in recent decades have stabilized the bird's population and the immediate threat of extinction is now low, Salazar said. With ongoing conservation efforts, the grouse will hopefully never have to be listed under ESA, he said.

John O'Keefe, a rancher and representative to the Public Lands Council, said ranching is compatible with the sage grouse's potential recovery.

"There was a time there was a lot more grazing going on, and a lot more sage grouse," he said.

Development and road building in the West have cut into the sage grouse's habitat, as have invasive plants like juniper, cheatgrass, medusahead and Russian thistle, O'Keefe said.

If the sage grouse had been listed as threatened or endangered, efforts to improve its habitat may have fallen by the wayside during the likely battle over grazing restrictions, he said.

"I'd be afraid all the attention would move to that effort," O'Keefe said.

The Center for Biological Diversity -- which has been involved in prior litigation over the status of the sage grouse -- is disappointed by the "warranted but precluded" finding.

No additional protections will be extended to the bird even though it's been found to warrant listing, said Rob Mrowka, an ecologist for the environmental group.

"It's a lot of feel-good but not a lot of substance," Mrowka said.

The group feels particularly let down by the decision because it initially had high expectations of the Obama administration's commitment to environmental causes, he said.

Judging from President Barack Obama's first year, he is on track to list fewer species under ESA than his two predecessors, Mrowka said.

"We're kind of perplexed," he said. "We don't know what to make of it."

The Center for Biological Diversity recently filed several lawsuits seeking to list 93 species as threatened or endangered, and the sage grouse may be added to one of those legal complaints, Mrowka said.

The Western Watersheds Project, another environmental group, has already taken that step.

On March 8, three days after the "warranted but precluded" announcement, the group filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, claiming the agency's finding violates federal law.

"This 'precluded' determination relegates the sage grouse to the long list of ESA 'candidate' species -- a black hole from which few species ever emerge, and under which they receive no ESA protection -- and represents yet another non-scientific, politicized and arbitrary determination that prevents the sage grouse from obtaining the ESA protection that it urgently needs," according to the group's legal complaint.