COMMERCE CITY, Colorado (Reuters) — A long-simmering debate in the western United States over the fate of a ground-dwelling bird reached a climax in late September as president Barack Obama’s administration denied Endangered Species Act protections to the greater sage grouse in favour of less rigid habitat conservation measures.
Interior secretary Sally Jewell said the need to list the bird as threatened or endangered was averted by the success of unprecedented collaboration among state and local governments, scientists, ranchers and other private interests over the last five years.
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Jewell credited those efforts with significantly reducing threats to the sage grouse across 90 percent of its breeding habitat, staving off any immediate risk of extinction.
“This is the largest, most complex land conservation effort in the history of the United States,” he said.
The plight of the grouse, which is a key indicator species for the vanishing sagebrush ecosystem of the American prairie, has pitted conservation groups against oil and gas drilling, wind farms and cattle grazing in one of the biggest industry-versus-nature controversies in decades.
The greater sage grouse is considered endangered in Canada, where fewer than 140 birds are left in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Conservationists say the U.S. decision does not mean the bird is out of danger.
The U.S. announcement marked a turnabout from a 2010 finding by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that endangered species protection for the grouse was warranted but that other species were a higher priority.
The conservation strategy implemented since then offers an alternative for saving the grouse while allowing activities such as energy development, mining and ranching to co-exist with the chicken-sized prairie fowl, Jewell said.
The greater sage grouse, known for its elaborate mating rituals, once numbered in the millions but now number 200,000 to 500,000.
