Sage Grouse Planning (the battleground for 2022)

By Laura Leigh on December 2, 2021

On November 19, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced its intent to review the management plan for the Greater Sage Grouse and sagebrush habitat. BLM will examine new scientific information to assess future action to support best support sagebrush habitat conservation with climate change resilience as a major focus of new management actions. The review findings will be used to update the management plan which was adopted in 2015 and later amended in 2019. Public comments are due on February 7, 2022 and may be submitted here.

Video above: On World Wildlife Day, March 3, 2017, EnviroNews Nature released one of the largest and most expansive documentaries ever published on a wildlife species in peril — the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). This video is still one of the best out there to explain this saga, even though it is over 4 years old.

Why is the battle to protect sage grouse still raging on, after millions upon millions of tax-payer dollars were spent to “protect” the bird without listing it on the Endangered Species Act? Why, since massive Sage Grouse plans were passed and adopted, is the bird in more danger than ever?

Why is this important for the wild horse and burro advocate to understand? The process to stop the listing of the Greater Sage Grouse is the most sweeping and expensive western land management political game in the West. The expense is not to protect the bird, it is to create schemes not to protect a native species. Wild horses and burros were the first to be scapegoated by every other interest as the pie of public land is carved up and fought over. Big corporate interests began many unlikely alliances and the backdoor deals began to stop the listing.

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You can simply look at the map above of one state, Nevada, and the overlap of the originally proposed map of sage grouse habitat.

The originally planning meetings, populated primarily by industrial interests, placed removal of wild horses as the first box to check in the charade of protecting the bird.

Our representative was the only person from wild horse advocacy in those original meetings. Her reports show that both industrial representatives (livestock, mining, hunting, etc.) and members from the “big green” groups had formed a type of desperation pact to ease the brunt of any protection for the bird. Both sides were busy blaming wild horses.

In one meeting the metrics from one of the studies done, in part, at the Sheldon National Wildlife refuge, were reviewed. There was no “cattle only” component done concurrently. The presenter admitted, after questioning, his original findings were flawed. Our representative had her mic cut at that juncture and the study was incorporated into documents used to “blame the horse.”

Things got so bad at the meeting that referencing flaws in “section 2.2.5” was the only way our rep could be heard at all during the larger meetings. Any reference that wild horse habitat was under the exact same threats as sage grouse habitat, and critically, that there were no actually Herd Management Area Plans (HMAPs) that spelled out critical wild horse habitat, were immediately shut down by all other interests present. Simply presenting the words “critical habitat” in context of wild horses can make a land manager stutter.

The resulting plans that were approved saw roundup after roundup slam wild horse herds down to genetically bankrupt levels (“Appropriate Management Levels”). More funding went into roundups through “Sage Grouse Protection.”

Look at any roundup schedule beginning in 2017 and you can see “GrSG” again and again listed in the “purpose and need” column; Greater Sage Grouse (GrSG). Check the box, get the funding.

“If this is what the livestock industry and the state see as habitat preservation we can kiss the sage grouse good bye along with any remote pretense of management,” concluded Katie Fite.
(photo WildLands Defense, our partner in legal actions against many of the livestock schemes born under “GrSG protection”)

Instead of joining the fight to protect the wild place, seeing wild horses as an important part of protecting the landscape they need to survive, another unholy alliance was created “Ten Years to AML.” (morphed into Path Forward) This “alliance” created an avenue acceptable to industry and sold-out the fight for the wild.

Wild horses and burros were caught between the (now approved) multi-million dollar GrSG plans and the multi-million dollar Path Forward. Those of us in the ground battle were run over and years of valuable work tossed aside as BLM looked for more “acceptable partnership” that would not ruffle any feathers.

Fish Creek curlies that were once part of a plan to craft an HMAP to protect the herd were casualties of drama both big and small. The unique genetics were not enough to save them from petty squabbles or livestock, mining and, yes, oil and gas lease sales.

This sets the stage for the greatest public lands battle in 2022.

Will we see another horrifically expensive whitewash tour from the administration? Will enviro and industrial interests gang up against wild horses to find one thing they can agree on? Will those that support the “Path Forward,” openly and simply moving one arm of it, actually join the fight this time or just make “cooperative” alliances? Note: Maybe it is a good time to start asking the groups that got press releases on wild horses this year how they stand on wild horses and sage grouse?

Will the media, Congress and the public begin to understand wild horses and burros are actually integral to the system of public lands under law? The system is not only the physical landscape, the system is a series of interlocking management plans.

We have 177 Herd Management Areas (HMAs) in the US. Only 7 have any form, no matter how shabby, of an actual working management plan.

This is the story media wants. But the story of the wild, wild horse is more like the story of the Greater Sage Grouse. This is the end of the story of the wild, not the beginning. What comes afterwards is all collateral damage of the failed system of management.

Until BLM is held to the fire to craft HMAPs for every herd, wild horses and burros have no management plan and will simply be shoved into a “gather plan” that interlocks to suit all the others. As drought hits again, wild horses and burros have no management plan and will simply be shoved into a “gather plan” that interlocks to suit all the others. As GrSG planning moves forward, wild horses and burros have no management plan and will simply be shoved into a “gather plan” that interlocks to suit all the others.

Living on a range threatened by mining and livestock this herd is set to be decimated. The sage grouse that live here are declining due to rapid expansion of industry. WHE is in active litigation to save this herd from the politics that rule the range.

As wild horse and burro advocates are you ready to fight to protect and preserve your interest? Are you ready to recognize that protecting wild horses involves land use planning and not only what population growth suppression will be used to suit industry that wants the numbers kept absurdly low?

2022 is a pivotal year. The focus is drought, Sage Grouse and getting actual management planning, once and for all, for our wild horses and burros to keep them integral to the system of public lands.

Our team is busy wading through the documents and crafting comments. The comments we will write are not something that can be written rapidly, we need to take a lot of time in research. You can wade through the documents yourself here: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2016719/510

We will not sell-out the fight for the wild. There is a very bumpy and twisted road ahead. Hang on.

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