The Bureau of Land Management has released a draft plan to strengthen greater sage grouse conservation and management on the 67 million acres of sage grouse habitat the agency manages in the West.

There are a lot of eyes on this for a lot of reasons, said Sigrid Johannes, director of Public Lands Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association public affairs.

“The first one is that the sage grouse is a very iconic western species of bird,” she said.

It’s a native species of the sagebrush steppe, which is one of the ecosystems or biomes foundational to landscapes across the western U.S. and is considered a keystone species, she said.

When the sage grouse population declines, conservationists look into what other things are downhill in the ecosystem. That’s why there’s so much interest in conserving it and its habitat, she said.

Environmental hijack

Unfortunately, there’s been a big push from environmentalists to hijack a well-meaning effort to conserve sage grouse and use it to remove grazing from federal lands, she said.

“But when it comes to the sage grouse, like many other species, we actually have very good science to support the fact that cattle and this bird can coexist and, in many cases, cattle actually improve habitat for this bird,” she said.

BLM’s proposed amendment will impact 77 separate land-use plans currently in place across 10 western states, she said

“They are supposed to be pretty locally focused and pretty landscape specific. But we sometimes still see a little bit more of a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach than we would like,” she said.

Proposed alternatives

The rulemaking includes an Environmental Impact Statement for six alternatives of what management would look like on the ground, she said.

Some alternatives are really restrictive to oil and gas. Some are pretty restrictive for renewable energy. Some are more restrictive toward grazing. Some are a good balance of all of those plus some conservation measures to assist the bird and sagebrush habitat, she said.

It’s a really over-arching proposal, with more than 600 pages, and it’s going to impact millions and millions of acres, she said.

“So we really want to make sure that we are seeing every angle here, and we think that that needs more time. We think local stakeholders need more time,” she said.

Comment extension

NCBA is asking BLM to extend the comment period from 90 days to at least 180 days. Once that’s accomplished, NCBA will write technical comments to support the fact that cattle improve the habitat, the biomass of insect species sage grouse need to eat and help prevent fires — a massive factor in loss of habitat for sage grouse, she said.

Studies in the last 20 years or so have led to a shift in the conclusions that conservationists are reaching about the role cattle play.

Research has found:

• Successful sage grouse nesting sites in close proximity to cattle grazing.

• Good survivability rates in grazing areas.

• Cattle presence improves soil, plant and insect diversity.

• Grazing restores native rangelands.

The conclusion that “what’s good for the herd is good for the bird” and vice versa has only gotten stronger over the years as more studies have been completed, she said.