BLM leaders never had the desire or will to do what it takes to preserve Sage grouse populations. Sage-grouse plans make major concessions to industries, and especially to the great destroyer of sagebrush habitat across the West, the public lands livestock industry. They chickened out rather than risk the buzzsaw of cattlemen resistance and western politician anger that comes with any effort to rein in livestock impacts on public lands.
As the Sage-grouse ESA listing was coming to a head in the 2010s, BLM and the Forest Service went into overdrive, scapegoating Pinyon Juniper (PJ) forests as a major cause of Sage-grouse declines. Their Forever War on PJ was cranked up to overdrive, to make it appear like something significant was being done. Ranchers predictably ranted about the onerous burden of the toothless grazing elements of the Sage-grouse plans, but cheered forest destruction. Politician press releases bragged about funding doled out to ostensibly save the bird, much of which captured agencies used to kill trees, often with great violence. Non-stop scheming to eliminate PJ forests continues up to the present.
Land grant school range departments, BLM staff and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) already had a handy tree hate vocabulary ready to use – trees are encroaching, invading, water-sucking weeds, hazardous fuels, undesirable, uncharacteristic. TNC has been deeply involved in the public land treatment-industrial complex, receiving countless lucrative federal contracts. BLM brandished concocted forest “Phase” categories, contracted TNC reports and modeling based on ridiculously short fire return intervals. BLM slathered NEPA documents with fire hysteria to justify deforestation, ignored forest ecology and recovery in historic forested land areas in the aftermath of white settler colonization clearing, the 1800s mining boom fueled by wood, uncontrolled stockmen burning, and decades of past agency forest eradication projects plainly stated to be done for cattle forage. BLM ignored that PJ forests are less likely to burn than sage and grass, so the PJ projects increase fire risk.
Plunging Pinyon Jay Populations
Meanwhile, Pinyon Jays have been declining at breakneck speed, faster than Sage-grouse. They’re down by 85% in the past 50 years and predicted to continue crashing. Defenders of Wildlife petitioned the Pinyon Jay for ESA listing in 2022. In response, USFWS issued a positive 90-day finding determining that the birds may warrant ESA listing, but then acted to kick the can down the road.
The great tragedy of sacrificing biodiverse PJ forests under claims of saving Sage-grouse is the foreseeable extinction of the Pinyon Jay, coupled with declines in other forest avifauna – Black-throated Gray Warbler, Juniper Titmouse, Gray Vireo, Ferruginous Hawk, Clark’s Nutcracker (already reeling from whitebark pine loss), and cavity nesters like Mountain Bluebird and Ash-throated Flycatcher. The magical rolling and swirling flocks and exuberant calls of Pinyon Jays may vanish – and along with them, the pinyon pine tree that relies on animal seed dispersers and especially Pinyon Jay seed caching.
I encourage anyone, including Musk’s Dogies, to figure out how much taxpayers have spent on these Pinyon Jay extinction projects conducted by the BLM, Forest Service, NRCS and state agencies in the past 20 years, including through contracting intermediaries like Pheasants Forever and through funding TNC and others to churn out forest-dooming vegetation models, reports, propaganda and now even burning crews. In 2023, the Forest Service obligated $45 million to TNC to push fire. This seems similar to USAID grants given to NGOs operating in foreign countries to push the US government’s agenda, which has stirred up a lot of recent controversy. National Forests across the Intermountain region (from the Dixie to the Caribou-Targhee) have just completed huge acreage generalized Fire EAs, like the Manti-La Sal Forest burning project challenged by Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, Council on Fish and Wildlife and WildLands Defense. The Forest Service plans to convert Pinyon Jay habitat and other forest types to ashes and wood chips year-round. These EAs treat PJ forest, where present, as disposable weeds – both inside and outside current Sage-grouse range.
In 2023, BLM ladled out $161 million of IRA funds for restoration landscapes, and portions of this funding are likely to be used to target PJ. BLM recently gave $24 million in IRA funds to Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative, a program that’s been laying waste to Pinyon Jay habitat for almost 20 years, converting biodiverse forests to forage seedings, often while claiming to save Sage-grouse. The Utah Initiative has funded many TNC reports and mapping projects used by agencies to destroy both forests and sagebrush. Their Utah Dugout Ranch cattle grazing helps gain favor with cattle ranching feel-good stories. Web searches will turn up many more recent federal allocations, with TNC often getting a piece of the action.
Despite clear evidence of past forest cover, project NEPA documents claim landscapes occupied by PJ should be nearly all sagebrush (never dense though, but well-behaved sparse shrubs flush with forage grass). Pinyon Jays use all “Phases” of the forest, and especially those that agencies target most. Many major authorized projects aren’t yet completed. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed to the treatment-industrial complex for PJ killing. We should be swimming in Sage-grouse, right? Despite major regional deforestation, that’s not the case.
These Pinyon Jay extinction projects are continuing seamlessly between administrations. New Trump 2.0 projects include Ely BLM’s Illipah Watershed White Pine Range project. This uses SNPLMA “conservation” funds from disposal sale of public land for Las Vegas sprawl for PJ killing and sprucing up decrepit cattle fences and water developments.
Last month, Cedar City BLM released a proposed 860 square mile Indian Peak project in the Wah Wah and Needles Ranges and Pine and Hamlin Valleys on the Nevada border, where both Pinyon Jay and Sage-grouse habitats have already been ravaged by past BLM and Utah Watershed Initiative projects. The Indian Peak project incorporates more TNC voodoo vegetation modeling, as BLM states:
“To better understand current ecological conditions, forecast future trends, and develop conservation strategies, BLM partnered with the Nature Conservancy to conduct a landscape-scale ecological assessment”.
BLM refused to release the TNC Indian Peak reports when I requested them during scoping, but I found them elsewhere, and they’re full of masticating, bulldozer chaining, chainsawing, burning and spraying including use of Tebuthiuron to kill sage and trees.
Nevada BLM Director Jon Raby is Trump’s acting BLM head until oil lobbyist Kathleen Sgamma gets confirmed. He was a Trump 1.0 appointee kept on by Tracy Stone-Manning. Raby’s overseen the Mojave solar development ecocide, nonstop mutilation of Nevada PJ forests, and pushed through abusive “targeted grazing” and livestock facility sprawl while doing nothing to effectively deal with grazing degradation.
O’NEIL PROJECT CASE EXAMPLE
It’s hard to keep track of all the threats to Nevada wildlands right now. Wells BLM’s O’Neil project was scoped in 2016 based on a Sally Jewell-era FIAT forest and sage radical landscape manipulation scheme. It languished during Trump 1.0, but the Biden BLM brought it back from the dead. Stretching over 2.4 million acres in Elko County, it encompasses much of northeastern Nevada – Jackpot south to Wells, east to Montello and west to the Jarbidge Forest. BLM targets “undesirable vegetation components” in 12 restoration units of 150 square miles and 15 conifer units with 136 square miles of deforestation. Cooling, carbon sequestering PJ forests that take several hundred years to develop are undesirable in BLM’s cattle-centered eyes, fit only to be masticated, chained, cut down and burned up. In addition, there are to be 400+ miles of fuel breaks with sage mowed to 2-inch height.
The resulting hot, dry, windy, deforested, denuded and constantly grazed land will become cheatgrass expansion zones. But never fear – BLM plans to spray the destroyed PJ sites, fuel breaks, restoration zones, and other unknown areas across 2.4 million acres with herbicide mixtures, and specifically authorizes use of all the weed- killers in the agency arsenal. BLM has been ramping up toxics use in recent years, despite lack of effectiveness in grazed lands. The restoration part of the project is to try to get sage to grow in cheatgrass-infested areas, while ignoring that chronic livestock disturbance causes cheatgrass.
BLM tries to soften public perception of its attack on forest avifauna by saying that heavy equipment masticators, D-9 bulldozer chaining, chainsaws, and pile burns will “feather” the forest. This feathering, just like the agency’s long-time forest butchery phrase “creating a mosaic”, means new habitat loss and fragmentation for the birds. BLM says it will leave some older trees, ignoring that sap from cut and wounded pinyon attracts beetles that infest remaining patches. One day soon there won’t be any trees left.
Nevada BLM Plans Pinyon Jay Extinction Projects as Offsets in Development-Threatened Landscape
The O’Neil project EA analysis states:
“The conifer reduction and herbicide treatments … would help offset losses or degradation of sagebrush-steppe habitat” and refers to a table with acres of foreseeable mining, right-of-way, land exchange and other unidentified new development acres listed. This sure seems to be saying that Pinyon Jay habitat is to be feathered and wiped out so BLM can pretend to mitigate for authorizing new developments in Sage-grouse habitat.
Surge Battery Metals and other Lithium Boomers
A month after signing the O’Neil decision in late 2024, BLM released the Surge Battery Metals Nevada North lithium exploration draft EA, in the midst of the O’Neil project area. Surge plans 250 acres of disturbance across 12 square miles. Mining disturbance is defined as bulldozed or smashed vegetation acres, not the activity’s full footprint. There are no specific bulldozed road and drill pad sites identified, no bore hole numbers and depth information, and no disclosure of proximity to springs and drainages provided for nearly all the exploration work. Details will be decided after drilling begins. BLM calls this veiled drilling scheme a “Phased” approach, not to be confused with the agency’s PJ killing “Phase” terminology. Other lithium hopefuls, despite a current global price slump, include Grid Battery Metals, Peloton Minerals, Sienna Resources, and Red Mountain Mining. All have publicized staking lithium claims near the Surge site. This landscape was supposed to have been withdrawn from mineral entry under the 2015 BLM Sage-grouse plans, but that never happened.
Surge’s project lies east of the Granite Range by Texas Springs. It straddles the watershed divide between the Great Basin and the Interior Columbia where pre-dam Salmon once spawned in Nevada headwaters. O’Neil project fuel breaks run right by the exploration block, and it’s surrounded by several PJ killing zones. Surge’s sagebrush drilling damage is to be mitigated with a convoluted conservation credit system through the state Sagebrush Ecosystem Council (SEC):
“… a debit assessment using the Habitat Quantification Tool (HQT) to determine effects on GRSG [Sage-grouse] habitat …. Surge would purchase credits to offset the calculated debits ahead of any land disturbance”.
This credit system is an elaborate calculation scheme developed as part of the state’s Sage-grouse plan. That plan resulted from a process greatly influenced by gold mines and ranchers, with TNC often providing spun science. Many SEC projects are a mitigation façade and consist of typical government hand-outs to ranchers.
Last year, I asked Winnemucca BLM about the status of Lithium Americas Thacker Pass mine EIS Sage-grouse mitigation promises. BLM said it was out of their hands, go ask the SEC. I did, and was told:
“Thacker Pass offset 1/3 of their mitigation obligation by purchasing credits through one of our private credit projects in Washoe Valley [Estill Ranch], which is a project that conserves quality greater sage-grouse habitat and locks it away from development. I believe they are also working on meadow restoration and grazing improvements on this credit project. The remainder of Thacker Pass’ mitigation obligation is to be purchased by 2031.“
Sage-grouse habitat loss at Thacker Pass is being mitigated, years after the gaping mine pit obliterated sagebrush in the McDermitt Caldera, with ranch projects 100 miles distant. You don’t have to be a biologist to see how worthless this is.
The O’Neil EA identified PJ eradication and herbicide spraying as offsets. I can only wonder if BLM resurrected the O’Neil project to provide sham mitigation opportunities if lithium mining, phosphate mining, and other pending development pan out. Pinyon Jay habitat destruction has been used by the SEC for mine mitigation in the past. SEC projects are done on private land, and the O’Neil EA oddly includes anticipated deforestation of 20,000 acres of private lands, primarily in the Winecup Ranch’s domain.
The Biden BLM Public Lands Rule opened up public lands West-wide for mining and energy mitigation leasing schemes that would help facilitate what was termed “thoughtful development”, stating:
“Restoration leases provide greater clarity for the BLM to work with appropriate partners to restore degraded lands. Mitigation leases will provide a clear and consistent mechanism for developers to offset their impacts …”.
Besides the scramble for lithium, O’Neil lands includes SWIP North, a new transmission line planned to tear through from Ely to Twin Falls. In addition, the Biden BLM Solar EIS 31-million acres industry land grab allocated a diagonal north-south swath through O’Neil from I-80 to the Idaho border for potential development. Potential geothermal development is lurking, too.
Grazing Degradation
Both the O’Neil and Surge analyses were silent on the background level of livestock damage to Sage-grouse habitat. The lithium exploration project lies within the quarter million-acre Salmon River allotment where BLM has stacked sheep grazing on top of cattle use, claiming sheep would eat larkspur that was killing cows on the depleted land. This worsened watershed impacts because sheep now trample and strip steep slopes. The poor conditions prompted a long-ago field trip by Bob Abbey, Nevada BLM Director at the time. I recall a caravan of agency staff and ranchers, with Range magazine writers along to spin the trip for the stockmen, lumbering through the Granite Range and peering into gullied Trout Creek. The upshot was BLM built more pipelines and Sage-grouse killing fences, and tweaked livestock rotations. This made little difference, other than expanding weeds and depleting springs gutted for pipelines.
Major O’Neil PJ projects are slated for the nearly million-acre Winecup-Gamble allotment complex, where grazing is dominated by billionaire Stan Kroenke’s Winecup Ranch herds, with over 50,000 AUMs permitted to his operation. Several years ago, BLM issued an “Outcome-based” grazing decision for Winecup. It was so outrageous that the Office of Hearings and Appeals stayed the decision after WildLands Defense appealed. They ruled that BLM’s analysis actively misled the public by claiming illusory grazing reductions. BLM said cattle and sheep were being reduced in alternatives, when in fact, lands were to be stocked well above the actual use AUM grazing levels that BLM had documented to cause land health violations in the first place. Besides building more pipelines, wells and fences harming Sage-grouse– the Winecup Ranch sought to add in goat grazing to gnaw down anything in sight.
Mother of All Land Exchanges
In 2023, Kroenke proposed a controversial land exchange to transfer the ownership of 84,000 acres of private land to obtain 230,000 acres of public lands. The Nevada Independent reported:
“Billionaire Stan Kroenke, owner of the Winecup Gamble Ranch, as well as the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Rams and estimated by Forbes to be worth $14.6 billion, is proposing a potential land transfer with the federal government that would consolidate a substantial chunk of the checkerboarded land in northeastern Nevada”.
The 2025 USA Today Land report lists Kroenke as the 4th largest landowner in the US, holding 1,762,000 private acres. He is reported to have married a Walton heiress, built a real estate empire (including strip malls anchored by Walmarts), and bought sports teams in the US and beyond. Arsenal is part of his empire. News of the Kroenke land exchange proposal provoked public outrage. It’s now gone quiet. The uproar may have killed it, or it may surface again in modified form. Who knows what development schemes may be behind a swap of this magnitude.
Billionaire public lands ranchers like Kroenke enjoy the privilege of taxpayer subsidized nearly free grazing on public lands – paying the public $1.35 a month per AUM to graze one cow or five sheep. BLM’s Winecup grazing EA analysis misled the public to benefit a billionaire’s welfare ranching operation. Now BLM has authorized the O’Neil project, a major deforestation subsidy for Winecup, that will replace native forests with seeded grass and shrubs that the billionaire’s livestock can eat.
I was up in the Toano Range in 2020, just east of the O’Neil area, looking south into the Pequops Range while on a separate BLM PJ killing proposal field trip, and heard booms. That’s not wildfire smoke – it’s Nevada Gold Mines (Barrick and Newmont combo) dynamiting PJ forest and sage to smithereens for their Long Canyon gold mine. That mine has now shut down. There’s no water available in the aquifer without causing grave harm to the region’s springs. With lax BLM and state oversight, and Nevada’s anti-environmental politicians serving as lackeys of foreign mines embracing loss of public lands, slipshod analysis of major projects is routine.
To the BLM, destroying native forests and wiping out a wonderful caching corvid is seen as a positive offset. I doubt that the Trump Interior Department will bother much with offset flimflam. It’s the kind of false absolution for environmental sins that the Obama and Biden Interior gang loved. The Trumpers, busy breaking things, are unlikely to make any excuses for environmental harm. Pinyon-Juniper ecosystem destruction is now baked into federal and state policies, and western land grant school dogma. This has been aided by conservation organizations bending science and constructing narratives to favor industry exploitation of public lands. These twisted policies are pushing both Pinyon Jay and Sage-grouse closer to extinction.
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