Bureau of Land Management releases plan to reduce Western sagebrush wildfires, protect sage grouse habitat

"Officials on Friday released an overarching plan for removing or changing vegetation over a huge swath of the U.S. West to stop devastating wildfires on land used for cattle ranching, recreation and habitat for imperiled sage grouse," reports Keith Ridler of The Associated Press. "The plan released by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management aims to limit wildfires in a 350,000-square-mile area of mainly sagebrush habitat that includes parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah."

The Obama administration came up with the program, which originally cost about $2 million, as a way of protecting sage grouse habitat without formally listing the birds as an endangered species. That could have hindered mining, ranching and recreation, Ridler reports. 

"Giant rangeland wildfires in recent decades have destroyed vast areas of sagebrush steppe ecosystems that support some 350 species of wildlife," Ridler reports. "Experts say the blazes have mainly been driven by cheatgrass, an invasive species that relies on fire to spread to new areas while killing native plants, including sagebrush on which sage grouse depend." Cheatgrass expansion is driven not only by wildfires but by unsustainable populations of wild horses and burros. 

"The plan released Friday does not authorize any specific projects. Instead, its analysis can be used to OK treatments for projects involving prescribed fires, fuel breaks and other measures to prevent or limit massive blazes that have worsened in recent decades," Ridler reports. "Specifically, the agency said the document can be used to help local land managers comply with an environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, when land managers seek approval for specific projects."

Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, an environmental watchdog group, worries the plan is essentially a BLM "blank check" that will help ranchers and harm wildlife without further input or detailed analysis. "This is an agency whose track record of vegetation manipulation has overwhelmingly resulted in habitat destruction," Molvar said in a press release.