The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service delivered its long-awaited verdict on the Gunnison sage-grouse Wednesday, determining that the bird’s population is threatened — though not endangered. The difference, in the agency’s terms, is a matter of degrees: the latter are “at the brink of extinction now,” whereas threatened species, “are likely to be at the brink in the near future.” In either case, the Endangered Species Act gives USFWS the authority to ensure species listed under the label do not cross the threshold. While that is appropriate, conceptually, it does not account, practically, for the excellent work being done at the state level to improve Gunnison sage-grouse numbers. Therefore, the listing constitutes an overreach.
The Gunnison sage-grouse is a relatively rare bird, found only in Southwest Colorado and Southeast Utah. There are just 4,700 of them, and with low genetic diversity and isolated populations, coupled with increasingly fragmented habitat due to development of sagebrush ecosystems, their success as a species has dwindled in the past 15 years. Local, state and federal agencies — as well as conservationists, developers and oil and gas industry representatives — took notice and began forming local workgroups to address the issue. To date, seven such groups have crafted conservation plans, and Colorado Parks & Wildlife has supplemented those with a statewide plan that provides the scientific underpinning for recovering the species.
That plan contains biological data on genetic diversity, habitat use, population estimates and viability analysis, as well as an evaluation of threats to local sage-grouse populations with the idea that this information “would provide the scientific basis upon which local and rangewide conservation efforts could be based.” It also examined the local plans and their population targets, identifying those that were not viable given the particular plan’s strategy and offered alternative and supplemental means to reaching targets. It offers habitat guidelines that include land use planning components, all of which recognize that “conservation works best when implemented at the most local level possible.”
That plan set long-range average populations of 4,500 Gunnison sage-grouse, divided among its habitat areas. By that measure, the local and statewide efforts appear to be working well. Given that they were developed in conjunction with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as well as the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Natural Resources and Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources, as well as local communities affected by sage-grouse habitat issues, the state and local conservation plans should be given more time to prove their efficacy before the Endangered Species Act hamstrings this work.
The state plan is scientifically sound and exportable to the local groups whose plans may require bolstering. Giving the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service trump power over those efforts is both premature and heavy-handed. Gov. John Hickenlooper is justified in rejecting the listing, citing the significant effort the birds’ advocates have made in addressing the issue. While the Fish & Wildlife Service may share the state and local concern about the sage-grouse, it is less appropriately positioned to respond from the top down. Instead, the agency should redouble its efforts to work with groups on the ground to bolster the progress they have made thus far.