Interior to announce sage grouse finding Friday

[March 05, 2010]  CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- The Interior Department plans to announce whether it will pursue endangered species protection for sage grouse, a decision with major ramifications for the West's renewable energy and oil and gas industries.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to say Friday whether the department will pursue listing the chicken-sized bird as endangered, threatened, or not endangered or threatened.

Many of the West's sagebrush expanses are considered good habitat for sage grouse, but are also prime areas for wind farms and oil and gas development. An endangered or threatened listing could put a stop to much of that development.

More than half of North America's sage grouse are believed to be in Wyoming. The bird also inhabits large portions of Nevada, Montana, Oregon and Idaho, and smaller areas in Colorado, Utah, California, Washington and the Dakotas.

Environmentalists say the announcement has importance beyond the fate of the sage grouse.

"If the federal decision results in greater protections for the sage grouse, then that's going to also result in greater protection for Western open spaces as a whole and all of the wildlife and recreational uses that depend on them," said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie.

The sage grouse finding results from a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an Idaho group, Western Watersheds Project. A federal judge in Boise, Idaho, ruled in 2007 that political pressure tainted an earlier decision not to list the sage grouse.

The department could decide that a listing is warranted but precluded by higher priorities.

But even a "warranted but precluded" finding could affect investment in energy development in the 11 states where sage grouse are found, because it would place greater scrutiny on public lands development that could affect the birds.

The grouse -- mottled brown, black and white -- is found on sagebrush plains and high desert from Colorado to California and north into southern Canada. Experts say wildfires, development and industry have steadily cut into its habitat.

[Associated Press; By MEAD GRUVER]

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