Although federal officials decided not to list the greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act on Tuesday, new federal stipulations are in place to help protect the birds.
The stipulations will affect land use and outdoor recreation on all federally-owned land, said Leland Hogan, president of the Utah Farm Bureau. He estimated about 80 percent of Tooele County is federally-owned.
As part of Tuesday’s landmark decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service identified core areas of sage-grouse habitat that will have some required regulations and voluntary regulations.
The agencies have also identified different priority levels within the core areas.
The most aggressively regulated areas are known as Sagebrush Focal Areas, where the agencies will “seek to eliminate new surface disturbance from various sources, including new mining”; Priority Habitat Management Areas, in which habitat disturbance will be limited or eliminated; and General Habitat Management Areas, where special management will be more flexible, according to a fact sheet for the BLM-USFS Greater Sage-Grouse Conservation Effort.
New restrictions caused by the federal plans have raised a number of concerns for state officials, from impacts on military training to restricted livestock grazing.
However, an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act would allow state plans to work within the next 5 to 10 years, during which time federal agencies would not be able to implement conservation plans that would affect state plans, said Randy Parker, the Utah Farm Bureau’s chief executive officer. The amendment passed the House in June and is currently being discussed in the Senate.
One of the main ways the federal plan differs from Utah’s state conservation plan is the strict regulations it places on private landowners, Parker said.
“It’s a little frustrating and discouraging that they wouldn’t accept what we’re trying to do,” Parker said. “They accepted other state plans but not ours. … I think because there’s no regulation component on private land. So it’s frustrating. When you think about this bird not being warranted for a listing and then you have these two agencies announcing they’re going to do this planning as if it were listed, what did we gain by it not being listed? That question needs to be posed in a major way.”
Instead of regulating private land through law, the Utah conservation plan relied on an incentive-based program, he added.
Parker identified three major concerns he and other officials share about the BLM and USFS’ plans: water rights going unused, livestock grazing cuts and increased wildfire danger due to diminished grazing. The Utah Association of Counties discussed the concerns during a meeting Wednesday in Midway, he said.
According to state law, privately-owned water rights that go without “beneficial use” for more than seven years revert back to the state. Beneficial use is defined as being used for livestock, crops, industrial or municipal development. However, the federal government has proposed legislation that would force the state to turn such vacated rights over to it, Parker said.
“The federal government has filed 16,000 diligence claims … which means those water rights go to them and asked the state of Utah to adjudicate that,” he said. “Utah has not done that.”
Parker said the state is currently drafting a bill called the Water Rights Protection Act, which would require the BLM and USFS to go through the state adjudication process for each vacated water right they tried to claim.
The right to graze on federal land is also a big concern, Hogan said.
“In Tooele County, we have a lot of small ranchers that depend upon the ability to graze on federally-owned land,” he said. “They have a full-time job somewhere else and then what makes their income work in their family is the fact they can run some cattle on the side and have the opportunity to live the lifestyle of a rural rancher.”
“Livestock grazing has not been determined to have a negative effect on the birds,” Parker added. “In fact, they have an almost symbiotic relationship … because the shorter grass allows the birds to see predators.”
In addition to having an economic impact, grazing restrictions will also have a direct impact on wildfires, Hogan said.
“[Spring and summer] rains do promote the growth, and if the growth isn’t grazed off, it gets burned off,” he said. “If there’s foliage on the ground and lightning strikes, it ignites.”
A map of identified areas within Utah, as well as the stipulations in effect for each area, is available on www.doi.gov/sagegrouse. Within the state, the BLM and USFS identified 228,500 acres of Sagebrush Focal Area, 2.7 million acres of Priority Habitat Management Area, and 583,000 acres of General Habitat Management Area. All three areas total just over 3.5 million acres.
On top of existing restrictions from Utah’s state conservation plan, federal restrictions may limit surface energy and mineral development, land development and livestock grazing permits within the designated areas.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell made the announcement Tuesday at 10 a.m. at a national wildlife refuge in Colorado, surrounded by state and federal officials.
“Because of an unprecedented conservation effort by dozens of partners across 11 western states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the greater sage-grouse does not require protection under the Endangered Species Act,” she said.
An accompanying news release, published by DOI, provided more details, including an announcement by the BLM and USFS about new federal stipulations.
The greater sage-grouse live in 11 western states. Approximately 4.4 percent of the bird’s population lives in Utah. The state also contains about 6.1 percent of habitat, according to the DOI.
The FWS first named the sage-grouse a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2010. As part of its decision not to list the bird, the FWS committed to monitor conservation efforts and evaluate the status of the species again in five years.
“Scientists estimate sage-grouse populations have fallen by as much as 90 percent since the 19th century,” Jewell said.
According to Tom Becker, a local wildlife biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the population of sage-grouse in Tooele County has gone down on a gradual basis for the last 20 years.