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Boise, IDAHO – Today, Western Watersheds Project filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada over its approval of new fences in important sage-grouse habitat on the Argenta allotment. Fences harm sage-grouse in a variety of ways. The decision to build the fences along six sections of streams on public lands was…
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Conservation Groups seek to restore science-based habitat protections on public lands BOISE, Idaho— Conservation groups today filed a lawsuit over more than a dozen greater sage- grouse plans produced by federal agencies that fail to protect this iconic western bird from a series of threats, including fossil fuel development, grazing and mining. The plans cover about 70 million…
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When President Obama signs the 2016 Omnibus budget bill as he’s expected to do later this week, he’ll be signing off on a lot more than hard-fought spending agreements. In what appears as a victory for conservation, he’ll be approving funding for the new west-wide management plans for sage-grouse habitat, approved by the Bureau of…
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BLM Plans to Turn Landscape into a Cattle Forage Zone. The highly vaunted, but meaningless, land management plans to save sage grouse are being put to the test with the recovery plan for the Soda Fire which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August. Instead of focussing on reestablishing native…
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Outlook for Iconic Bird is Bleak- By Greta Anderson, Dr. Michael Connor and Travis Bruner (208) 720-5595 Hailey, Idaho – In a double-whammy that will doom the sagebrush steppe and the iconic Greater sage-grouse to a dismal future, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced today the Obama Administration’s decision to rely on incomplete planning efforts…
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Boise, ID. Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project and other conservation groups filed administrative protests today against 14 federal sage grouse plans, spanning 10 western states saying they don’t adequately protect the birds. WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity joined Western Watersheds in the protests saying the federal plans disregard the scientific consensus on what…
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White Pine County, Nev. – A Western Watersheds Project appeal forced the Ely BLM to withdraw a recent decision to destroy Wyoming big sagebrush, black sage, and pinyon-juniper communities across the Newark watershed and parts of the Huntington Valley in Nevada. The BLM planned to use the cheatgrass-causing herbicide Tebuthiuron, mowers, bulldozers and other heavy…
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The Western Governors’ Association met earlier this month in Colorado to discuss, among other things, plans to oppose federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for Greater sage-grouse and undermine federal conservation laws. The sage-grouse is in grave decline across its range in the western United States, but rather than spend time developing ways to restore…
