Bureau of Land Management

Recovery planning for the Gunnison sage-grouse

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The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a draft recovery plan for the Gunnison sage-grouse in Colorado and Utah.  The Center for Biodiversity doesn’t like it, but more to the point, they like less how the BLM is managing Gunnison sage-grouse.  More to the point because recovery plans are not mandatory, while federal land management plans can be – and plan components must be mandatory to be considered “regulatory” enough to carry much weight in ESA listing and delisting decisions.  As the FWS said, “Establishing durable regulatory mechanisms that are binding and enforceable, such as revised land use planning amendments, will be important for recovery.”

CBD:

The recovery plan comes on the heels of BLM decisions not to designate any Areas of Critical Environmental Concern for Gunnison sage-grouse in the Tres Rios and Uncompahgre Resource management plans, and to adopt inadequate safeguards for the birds’ habitat in recent land-use plans. For example, although the draft recovery plan calls on federal land-management agencies to improve their resource management plans and protect suitable habitat within four miles of breeding sites, the BLM’s August 2019 proposed resource plan for its Uncompahgre Field Office protects only habitats within 0.6 miles of breeding sites. The BLM admits this would “fall short of minimum protection standards to maintain sage-grouse viability.”

“Bringing the Gunnison sage-grouse back from the brink requires decisive and concerted action, but instead we have two federal agencies working against each other,” said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Fish and Wildlife Service is urging federal land managers to improve protections for public-land habitat, but the BLM is moving in the opposite direction. This is a recipe for extinction for this beautiful bird. We’ll do everything possible to keep that from happening.”

The timing is also such that BLM plans were released prior to the draft recovery plan.  That means that the BLM should start taking another look at how their plans address this species and take into account the new information and recommended measures.  The same is true for the 10% of sage-grouse habitat that occurs on national forest lands. BLM is not subject to NFMA, so its obligation to maintain species viability to avoid listing under ESA is not as clear as for the Forest Service.  Forest Service plans must “contribute to recovery” of listed species, so failure to address elements of this recovery plan when it is final should raise serious questions.

In addition to specific conservation measures like the four-mile buffers for breeding leks, the draft recovery plan provides some specific desired conditions that could be included in land management plans:

2. Regulatory mechanisms or other conservation plans or programs, such as land-use management plans, reduce and ameliorate threats associated with habitat loss and degradation in all populations, such that:

A. Habitat in Dove Creek is improved and maintained at a quantity calculated to support a HMC of 30, although this criterion is not measured by achieving the target HMC.

B. Habitat in CSCSM is maintained at a quantity calculated to support a HMC of 7, although this criterion is not measured by achieving the target HMC.

C. Habitat is improved and maintained in Gunnison Basin, San Miguel, Piñon Mesa, Crawford, and Monticello at a quantity calculated to support the target HMCs as listed in Table 1.

At a minimum, the land management agencies will need to explain how these plans contribute to meeting their requirements under ESA to manage their programs to promote recovery of listed species, which should include how they are implementing the final recovery plan.

Trump Administration sage-grouse plans stopped

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The district court for Idaho has enjoined the Trump Administration’s attempt to cut back protection of sage-grouse on BLM lands in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada/Northeastern California, and Oregon from that provided by plan amendments in 2015. (A similar decision has been pending for national forest plans.) The changes made in the 2019 amendments to BLM land management plans can not be implemented, and the provisions in the 2015 amendments will apply (projects must be consistent with the 2015 amendments) until the case is decided on the merits.  (A link to the opinion is included with this news release.)

Moreover, the court telegraphed the merits pretty clearly:

“… the plaintiffs will likely succeed in showing that (1) the 2019 Plan Amendments contained substantial reductions in protections for the sage grouse (compared to the 2015 Plans) without justification; (2) The EISs failed to comply with NEPA’s requirement that reasonable alternatives be considered; (3) The EISs failed to contain a sufficient cumulative impacts analysis as required by NEPA; (4) The EISs failed to take the required “hard look” at the environmental consequences of the 2019 Plan Amendments; and (5) Supplemental Draft EISs should have been issued as required by NEPA when the BLM decided to eliminate mandatory compensatory mitigation.”

(1) “The stated purpose of the 2019 Plan Amendments was to enhance cooperation between the BLM and the States by modifying the BLM’s protections for sage grouse to better align with plans developed by the States. While this is a purpose well-within the agency’s discretion, the effect on the ground was to substantially reduce protections for sage grouse without any explanation that the reductions were justified by, say, changes in habitat, improvement in population numbers, or revisions to the best science contained in the NTT and CTO Reports.” The agencies did not fulfill their duty to explain why they are now making a different decision based on the same facts.

(2) The no-action alternative did not meet the purpose and need, and there was only one action alternative. “Common sense and this record demonstrate that mid-range alternatives were available that would contain more protections for sage grouse than this single proposal.”

(3) The BLM prepared six EISs based on state boundaries, but failed to provide the “robust” cumulative effects analysis this situation required. In particular, “connectivity of habitat – requires a large-scale analysis that transcends the boundaries of any single State.”

(4) “Certainly, the BLM is entitled to align its actions with the State plans, but when the BLM substantially reduces protections for sage grouse contrary to the best science and the concerns of other agencies, there must be some analysis and justification – a hard look – in the NEPA documents.” The court took particular note of the EPA comments that were ignored, and Fish and Wildlife Service endorsement of the 2015 amendments in deciding not to list the species under ESA because they adopted scientific recommendations (see below).

(5) Compensatory mitigation measures were eliminated after the draft EIS, which “appears to constitute both “substantial changes” to its proposed action and “significant new circumstances” requiring a supplemental EIS.

The case provides a good example of how science is considered by a court, which allowed declarations from outside experts to determine if relevant environmental consequences were ignored. The court relied heavily on earlier scientific reports that included normative “recommendations,” but the court focused on their scientific conclusions, such as “surface-disturbing energy or mineral development within priority sage-grouse habitats is not consistent with the goal to maintain or increase populations or distribution,” and “protecting even 75 to >80% of nesting hens would require a 4-mile radius buffer.” The Final EISs stated that there would be no measurable effects or they would be beneficial to sage-grouse, but the BLM either had no analysis or ignored this contrary information.

 

2016 election consequences for Colorado federal lands

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The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management over the last several years have been developing long-term Resource Management Plans for more than 3 million acres of BLM lands in Eastern Colorado and the Uncompahgre Plateau and in the Rio Grande National Forest.  According to this article, the state and local communities are not happy.

The Trump-driven shift toward more oil and gas development on public lands worries Colorado politicians and conservation groups that are steering the state toward increased protections. Agencies within the same department seem in conflict. Long-studied plans are changing between between draft and final reports, with proposed protections fading away and opportunities for extraction growing…

“What we are seeing is the full effect — in proposed actions — of the 2016 election at the local level,” Ouray County Commissioner Ben Tisdel said.

The article goes into detail about the effects on the Uncompahgre Field Office’s proposed plan:

County commissioners from Gunnison, Ouray and San Miguel counties have filed protests with the BLM over the Uncompahgre Field Office’s proposed plan. The counties have been involved with the planning for eight years. In 2016, the counties submitted comments on the plan outlining concerns for the Gunnison sage grouse and listing parcels the agency should protect and retain as federal lands.

“Alternative E proposed doing all the things we specifically asked them not to do,” said Tisdel, the Ouray County commissioner, adding that lands his county wanted protected were listed in the 2019 plan for possible disposal by the agency. “We thought we had a pretty good product in 2016 and now we have this new alternative, Alternative E, that goes way beyond anything we had seen before and is awful in ways we never thought of before.”

With regard to the Rio Grande National Forest revised forest plan:

The move from that September 2017 Draft Environmental Impact Statement to the final version released in August has riled conservationists and sportsmen. Goals established for air quality, designated trails, fisheries management, fire management, wildlife connectivity and habitat were scaled back in between the draft and final versions.

Colorado’s governor has weighed in on the BLM plan (in language consistent with the Western Governors Association policies):

The resource management plan’s “failure to adopt commitments consistent with the state plans, policies and agreements hinders Colorado’s ability to meet its own goals and objectives for wildlife in the planning area,” Polis wrote.

The BLM had an interesting response:

“There is room to adjust within the RMP, which has a built-in adaptive management strategy,” he said. “We are ready to respond as the state’s plans are complete.”

So they plan to do whatever the state wants them to do later?  “Room to adjust within the RMP” appears to mean that they don’t have to go through a plan amendment process with the public, which seems unlikely to be legal for the kinds of changes the state appears to want.  (It definitely wouldn’t work for national forest plans.)

The Western Energy Alliance blames the governor for being late to the game:

It doesn’t get a complete do-over just because something new happens, like Gov. Polis issues a new order.”

But it does apparently get a complete do-over because a new federal government administration says so.  There may still be some legal process (e.g. NEPA) questions this raises.

More on the BLM Move Numbers- Colorado Reporting

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Joey Bunch of Colorado Politics has yet another set of numbers 25 to Grand Junction and 85 to Colorado. Here’s his article.
Apparently, Bunch got his info from this letter to Senator Murkowski.

It looks to me like they are relocating 222 positions, but not all to Colorado. The letter even has a table of who is going to go where, and they explain their rationale. Certainly, you can disagree with it, but they do have one. It must also be noted that big funders are going after Senator Gardner, whose Senate seat is vulnerable, which attracts political funding like crows on an elk carcass. And yet, Senator Bennet also supports it, as does Conservation Colorado, as you can see below. Interesting that you might miss these aspects if you read The Hill version of the same story (with lots of quotes from Grijalva). (It makes me wonder what other stories might not be as partisan as they seem to be when covered by coastal press). The below excerpts are from the Colorado Politics article.

Of the 85 positions that could be moved to Colorado, 54 would be divided between the state’s existing BLM field offices and its National Operations Center at the federal office complex in Lakewood, which already employs about 500 people.

“Colorado has a diverse number of resource needs, ranging from minerals to recreation, while also serving as a hub for the Bureau’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) projects and priorities,” the BLM letter said. “As such, positions from nearly every directorate will be located in the Lakewood offices.”

BLM employs about 9,260 workers scattered across field offices mostly in the West. Besides Colorado, about 50 positions each would move to field offices in Utah and Nevada, said Sen. Rob Bishop, a Republican who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee.

Conservation Colorado, the state’s largest environmental group, praised the move, saying it would help the local economy and put agency leaders closer to the lands they manage. But the group criticized Gardner.

“It’s no surprise the Bureau of Land Management wants to relocate to Grand Junction. With a fantastic quality of life supported by our stunning public lands, the location is a no-brainer,” said a statement by Erin Riccio, Conservation Colorado’s Western Slope field organizer.

My bolding of Conservation Colorado’s statement.