(BOISE, ID) -- Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the U.S. District Court for the
District of Idaho granted a preliminary injunction ruling that the
administration failed to analyze how sage grouse would be harmed under a plan
issued in March that would allow for drilling and mining activities amongst the
bird’s habitat.
“It is likely that these actions will cause further declines
of the sage grouse under the weakened protections,” Winmill wrote in his decision.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management sought
to revise a previous sage grouse plan issued in 2015 by the Obama
administration with the support of western states. The Obama administration
decided not to list the bird as endangered — a more significant step — but
protected large chunks of habitat from oil and gas drilling. The range of the
grouse extends across 270,000 square miles in parts of 11 states in the western
United States. The bird's population once numbered in the millions but fell to
a few hundred thousand in recent decades.
