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SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Department of Interior's Assistant Secretary Janice Schneider said it will take an "all hands, all lands" approach in the Great Basin region to save the imperiled greater sage grouse, building on the success of cooperative partnerships and state plans already in place.
Schneider spoke Tuesday at a regionwide sagebrush conservation conference in Salt Lake City hosted by the Great Basin Consortium, Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and Utah State University.
"This is really an unprecedented undertaking," she said. "We are working across a whole landscape across the West and using the best available science and translating that into action to protect, restore and preserve the landscape. It really truly is an all hands, all lands strategy."
Schneider pointed to a memorandum of understanding slated to be signed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Forest Service that prioritizes reducing the threat of wildfire and invasive species, removing juniper and restoring wetlands.
The Interior Department is building on a national seed strategy, too, hoping to add $5 million more in the next budget cycle to the $60 million already spent to plant native vegetation.
Across the Great Basin, which is home to an array of challenges to the sagebrush steppe ecosystem and thus the greater sage grouse, the Interior Department completed restoration projects of 210,000 acres and wants to devote $79 million to the effort for the 2017 budget, she said.
Schneider detailed federal efforts to help the chicken-size bird that last September risked being added to the endangered species list because of rangewide threats to its habitat and because of its historically diminished numbers. Instead of a listing decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited the success of collaborative partnerships across the bird's habitat as a basis to determine a listing isn't warranted at this time.
In lieu of a listing, however, the BLM and Forest Service have revamped land-use management plans — more than 90 — in states where the bird exists, with regulations critics say are just as onerous as if the bird had been listed.
Earlier this month, the Utah Attorney General's Office announced its intention to sue the federal government over the BLM-imposed plans, arguing they disregard state sage grouse conservation plans already in place and the slate of new restrictions were developed in an arbitrary manner.
While political pushback continues to swirl from states around the bird and federal conservation mandates, Schneider ignored that fervor in her comments to a crowd of hundreds and instead praised individual state efforts.
She pointed to rancher-rangeland conservation partnerships being carried out in multiple Western states and praised the accomplishments of the Watershed Restoration Initiative in Utah, which has improved 1.2 million acres of habitat.
"The key takeaway on why Utah has been so successful is the continued level of collaboration and coordination that we have seen," Schneider said.
The efforts are continuing to gain momentum, even with action in the Utah Legislature, where Sen. Kevin Van Tassell, R-Vernal, is sponsoring a measure to create a compensatory sage grouse mitigation program.
The legislation, SB200, would set up conservation banks to mitigate the impacts of activity such as mining or oil and gas development.
Under the self-funded program, the long-term conservation and protection of sage grouse habitat would occur through either land acquisitions or habitat restoration to earn mitigation credits.
