The spending plan, which is the latest in a series of actions between the White House and Congress to avoid a government shutdown, funds the government for fiscal year 2015.
A provision added to the omnibus bill as a rider is a restriction on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to list some varieties of sage grouse as endangered within the next year. Without the spending budget line given to that agency, it cannot conclude its studies into whether to list the species.
But in a statement Wednesday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the congressional restriction rider “has no effect on our efforts to develop and implement state and federal plans and to build partnerships to incentivize conservation.”
“The Obama administration is still moving full steam ahead, and will continue to work with urgency alongside our federal, state and local partners to put conservation measures in place to protect important sagebrush habitat and avert the need to list the greater sage grouse,” Jewell said.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service will continue to collect data and conduct analysis, and the agency will reach a decision as to whether listing is warranted or not.”
Sage grouse numbers have been on the decline over a number of years in western states, where public lands are used for multiple resource and agricultural industries. In 2010, the FWS declared the greater sage grouse as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act in an area covering 11 states.
The U.S. Interior Department was facing a September 2015 deadline for deciding whether to list the greater sage grouse as an endangered species. When a species is listed as endangered, the federal government tightens its restrictions for public land uses as a way to protect habitat. Environmental groups have long targeted gas and oil exploration projects, as well as livestock grazing, as land uses detrimental to sage grouse restoration.
Western lawmakers, along with representatives from energy industries, lobbied for more time to develop state solutions rather than an overall approach set by the federal government.
Dustin Van Liew, executive director of the Public Lands Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Federal Lands, says the livestock industry strongly supported the congressional rider, saying it provided necessary time for state management plans to show results in sage grouse restoration.
“We believe it’s important the states that are working on plans are where sage grouse management should take place,” he says.
Van Liew says a 2011 decision by agencies to enter a settlement with environmental groups, which pushed listing decisions on species up to 2015, created an unrealistic urgency on sage grouse.
“We felt the timeline the agencies are working on is arbitrarily based on that behind-closed-door settlement,” Van Liew says. “That settlement dictated timelines for which agencies have to make decisions one way or another. That was setting [states] up for failure that these plans were not going to be in place and working by the time that deadline would come about.”
“We are more determined than ever to work with the states, ranchers, energy developers and other stakeholders who are putting effective conservation measures in place with the shared goal of reaching a ‘not warranted’ determination by the end of the fiscal year.”
Van Liew says he is unsure whether the congressional rider will have an impact on the Gunnison sage grouse, located in Colorado and Utah, or the bistate population sage grouse in California and Nevada. The federal agencies had already determined those species warranted listing before the rider was passed. 
PHOTO
The greater sage grouse. Photo provided by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
