UPDATE 3-Greater sage grouse denied U.S. Endangered Species Act protection

(Recasts with further conservation plan details, critique by
environmentalist group; Fish and Wildlife Service chief comment)
By Keith Coffman
COMMERCE CITY, Colo., Sept 22 (Reuters) - A long-simmering
debate in the American West over the fate of a ground-dwelling
bird reached a climax on Tuesday as the Obama administration
denied Endangered Species Act protections to the greater sage
grouse in favor of less rigid habitat conservation measures.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the need to list the
charismatic bird as threatened or endangered was averted by the
success of "unprecedented" collaboration among state and local
governments, scientists, ranchers and other private interests
over the last five years.
She credited those efforts with significantly reducing
threats to the sage grouse across 90 percent of its breeding
habitat, staving off any immediate risk of extinction.
"This is the largest, most complex land conservation effort
in the history of the United States," Jewell told a news
conference, joined by four Western governors and a host of top
federal land managers, at a wildlife refuge in Colorado.
The plight of the grouse, a key indicator species for the
vanishing sagebrush ecosystem of the American prairie, has
pitted conservation groups against oil and gas drilling, wind
farms and cattle grazing in one of the biggest
industry-versus-nature controversies in decades.
Tuesday's announcement marked a turnabout from a 2010
finding by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an Interior
Department agency, that endangered species protection for the
grouse was warranted but that other species were a higher
priority.
The conservation strategy implemented since then offers an
alternative for saving the grouse while allowing activities such
as energy development, mining and ranching to co-exist with the
chicken-sized prairie fowl, Jewell said.
The greater sage grouse, known for its elaborate mating
rituals, once ranged by the millions across a broad expanse of
the western United States and Canada.
They are now believed to number between 200,000 and 500,000
birds in 11 Western states and southern Alberta.
Despite long-term declines, sage grouse populations "remain
relatively abundant and well-distributed" across the bird's
173-million-acre (70-million-hectare) range, Fish and Wildlife
officials said.
Fish and Wildlife Service chief Dan Ashe said losses were
expected to continue, "but we believe at declining rates."
In addition to conservation programs for state and private
lands representing 45 percent of sage grouse habitat, a
patchwork of 98 U.S. land use plans also were revised to protect
the bird on federal property that accounts for most of the rest.
The federal plans impose a new set of tiered limits on
development inside 67 million acres (27 million hectares) of
designated habitat, with tougher restrictions on about half the
total. Even more stringent protections will apply to a subset of
those "priority" zones comprising 12 million acres (4.8 million
hectares).
Officials also pointed to newly adopted plans for curtailing
two key environmental threats - rangeland wildfires and the
spread of an invasive weed known as cheatgrass.
The announcement was immediately welcomed by the
Denver-based industry group Western Energy Alliance and the
Colorado Cattlemen's Association while receiving mixed reviews
from environmental groups.
National Audubon Society President David Yarnold endorsed
the decision, calling it "a new lease on life for the greater
sage grouse and the entire sagebrush ecosystem."
But Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist for WildEarth
Guardians, said the plans offered too little protection with too
many loopholes, though he said his group would review the
details before deciding whether to bring a court challenge.
Protections from oil and gas drilling, for example, are much
weaker in Wyoming, which accounts for 40 percent of all sage
grouse habitat, than in other states, Molvar said.
Unlike many such battles of the past, commercial interests
this time have embraced conservation efforts aimed at avoiding
potentially tougher restrictions under the Endangered Species
Act.
Many ranchers, in particular, found common cause with
efforts to protect Western rangelands on which their livestock
depend, often citing the rallying phrase, "What's good for the
bird is good for the herd."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has worked with 1,100
ranchers to restore or conserve 4.4 million acres (1.78 million
hectares) of key habitat, and the USDA said it expects
voluntary, private land conservation efforts to reach 8 million
acres (3.2 million hectares) by 2018.