DENVER—Colorado wildlife officials released a preliminary plan Friday aimed at conserving the greater sage grouse, which so far hasn’t been given federal protection despite its plummeting numbers.
The plan is intended to coordinate statewide efforts already under way among government agencies and Colorado residents to shore up the bird’s numbers and restore and preserve its habitat.
“Local working groups have done the meat of the work in terms of sage grouse (conservation),” said Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton.
The division doesn’t want to interfere with the local group, Hampton said.
“At the same time, there needs to be that bridge between local strategies and national strategies,” he added.
Wildlife managers throughout the West are studying the best ways to conserve the greater sage grouse, the largest of the chicken-like birds found on the Great Plains and rolling, sagebrush-dotted hills. The sage grouse in Colorado are concentrated in the northwest part of the state.
The male grouse, about 2 feet tall, are known for their spectacular displays on leks, a kind of parade grounds where, during mating season, they try to attract hens by fanning out their spiked tail feathers and repeatedly inflating and deflating the two big white air sacs on their chests.
An estimated 16 million sage grouse once inhabited the Western United States and Canada, but now number only 150,000 to 500,000.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the populations dropped an average of 3.5 percent a year from 1965 to 1985, but slowed to a decrease of 0.37 percent a year from 1985 to 2003.
After a yearlong study, Fish and Wildlife rejected a petition to designate the greater sage grouse as endangered in 2005. It cited conservation efforts among local, state, federal and private entities.
A lawsuit by Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project challenging that decision is pending.
Loss of sagebrush habitat to urbanization and conversion to crops and pastures have contributed to the drop in the numbers of the ground-dwelling bird. The booming energy development in the Rockies is another factor.
Brad Petch, senior wildlife conservation biologist for the state Wildlife Division, said some of the projects by the sage grouse working groups in the state include reseeding idle farm land to improve habitat, research, and removing sage brush canopy to encourage undergrowth.
A study released last year by University of Wyoming doctoral student Matthew Holloran found that sage grouse appear to avoid leks the closer they are to oil and gas development. The study, funded by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and energy companies, found declines in breeding males in leks within 3.1 miles of drilling rigs.
Federal restrictions were imposed earlier this year on coal-bed methane drilling and other activities within two miles of leks in northeastern Wyoming. They were lifted Friday, after the end of mating season.
Josh Pollock, conservation director of the Denver-based Center for Native Ecosystems, said the conservation programs by state and local agencies and groups are important. He added, though, that federal officials should prove that the efforts are working.
“They’ve been in practice for multiple years now,” Pollock said. “Meanwhile, we’re losing birds and we’re losing habitat.”
Pollock called the Colorado draft plan’s inclusion of core habitat areas “a step in the right direction” but criticized as inadequate the recommendation that disturbance be limited or prohibited within 0.6 of a mile from leks.
Petch of the Division of Wildlife said an informal standard of a quarter-mile buffer around leks has been used across the West.
“There’s a growing belief that’s not adequate,” he said.
The buffer recommended in the state plan is based on an analysis of the birds’ movements, Petch said.
The Division of Wildlife will take public comments on the plan through July 31. A final plan is expected in October.
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On the Net: Colorado Division of Wildlife Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Plan:
