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(Photo/Colo. Division of Wildlife)
DENVER (AP) -- The Gunnison sage grouse warrants federal protection but there aren't enough resources to pursue the listing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday.
The agency said in the latest decision that there was sufficient scientific and commercial data to propose threatened or endangered status for the bird but other threatened species have higher priority, including those already proposed to get protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The agency in 2006 decided against creating protections for the chicken-like bird, which lives in southwest Colorado and extreme southeast Utah. Fish and Wildlife revisited the issue after a report found political meddling in endangered species rulings.
The Gunnison sage grouse now joins a list of 248 plants and animals still awaiting consideration for protections nationally. It is among 53 candidates with the highest priority among that group. Fish and Wildlife says it will review its status each year.
The Gunnison sage grouse resembles but is smaller than the greater sage grouse, another candidate for federal protection. The greater sage grouse is found in several Western states including Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada.
Some environmentalists criticized the decision.
"Here we go again," said Mark Salvo of WildEarth Guardians in a statement. "The government has now determined that greater sage-grouse, Mono Basin sage-grouse, the Columbia Basin population and now Gunnison sage grouse all warrant protection under the ESA, but hasn't listed any of them."
Fish and Wildlife said the sage grouse needs large expanses of sagebrush to live and that the construction of roads and houses is the principal threat to its habitat.
In Colorado, state wildlife officials have teamed up with the Fish and Wildlife Service on a program encouraging landowners to protect the birds and their habitat. The goal is to preserve the birds and avoid federal oversight.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
