Trump administration unveils plan to open millions of acres of sage grouse habitat to oil and natural-gas drilling

Greater sage grouse permanent habitat
(map from DakotaBirds.com)

"The Trump administration on Thursday detailed its plan to open nine million acres to drilling and mining by stripping away protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled ground-nesting bird that oil companies have long considered an obstacle to some of the richest deposits in the American West," Coral Davenport reports for The New York Times.

The plan would open up millions of acres to drilling, more than any other step the administration has taken. It would also limit the sage grouse's highly protected habitat to 1.8 million acres and eliminate the requirement that drillers pay into the habitat preservation fund. States could keep Obama-era protections in place, and at least two, Montana and Oregon, are expected to. The administration's plan is the latest in a string of moves to promote drilling on public land. Predictably, environmentalists criticized the move while the energy industry praised it.

Sage grouse in mating ritual (AP photo by David Zalubowsi)

Bobby McEnaney, an expert in Western land use at lobbying group the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Davenport that "With this single action, the administration is saying: This landscape doesn't matter. This species doesn't matter. Oil and gas matter."

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an association of independent oil and gas companies, told Davenport in an email that the plan would conserve the sage grouse's habitat while "without needlessly stifling economic activity."

Whatever the fallout of the plan, once drillers start leasing the land and sinking rigs into the ground, the move will be "practically irreversible," said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School. The proposal is expected to be finalized next year, Davenport reports.