Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Wednesday night ordered a review of a conservation plan to protect the chicken-size sage grouse in the West, saying there is “a lot of mistrust and anger” in the states over the plan.
The Obama administration took the step of creating a strict conservation plan for the threatened bird species rather than take the much more drastic step of listing the bird as endangered.
Zinke told reporters Wednesday that he is not reversing the Obama-era plan but has heard complaints from states and is offering them opportunities to include their thoughts on how to manage sage grouse populations.
“Those complaints have been that we have been heavy-handed,” Zinke said. And those complaints are coming from most Western governors. “The complaints have been that the federal government is dictating terms too much.”
They want the Interior Department to provide more flexibility on what has been seen as a “one-size-fits-all solution,” he said.
The Zinke order establishes a task force that includes the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct the review.
The inclusion of the agencies is to make sure they “are on the same page” as the department looks at different policies, he said.
Zinke is particularly interested in looking at innovative ideas from the states that were not taken into consideration by the Obama administration. “We also want to be a good neighbor” by recognizing state ideas for management, he said.
One idea that Zinke appeared excited about on the call with reporters was using drones to conduct surveillance of the animals as part of the conservation plan. He said nothing has been decided, but the drone idea and others will be taken into consideration during the 60-day review period.
The task force also will look at state ideas on predator control and captive breeding programs. Many of the complaints about former President Barack Obama’s conservation plan stem from problems with using sage grouse territory for oil and gas development and other industrial activities.
He said the task force will make recommendations on how to move forward with new techniques and measures at the end of the review period.
Zinke said the goal is to implement the conservation plan, while maintaining that the sage grouse is not an endangered species.
