Sage grouse decision delayed a week

The West will have to wait another week for what could be one of the more significant federal government decisions of the past few decades: Whether to list the sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species.

If federal officials decide such protection is warranted for the chicken-size bird that lives in parts of several states, including Eastern Oregon, the resulting changes in how public land is managed could affect livestock grazing, energy developments including wind farms, and off-road vehicle travel.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was supposed to announce its decision about sage grouse by the end of February.

But officials asked for a one-week extension after the agency’s director, Sam Hamilton, died last weekend.

A federal judge in Boise granted that request Thursday.

Biologists say that in general sage grouse populations have declined over the past few decades. Experts attribute the trend to the conversion of sagebrush habitat for farming and housing, and degradation of that habitat caused by livestock grazing and fires.

The bird, as its name implies, depends on sagebrush.

Sage grouse not only eat sagebrush during winter, but they use taller, mature sage as shelter from weather and from predators such as coyotes.

Although cattle don’t as a rule eat sagebrush, they do munch on the grasses and other plants that grow between clumps of sage.

That vegetation supplies vital nutrition for sage grouse chicks, according to ODFW’s sage grouse management plan.

Opinions differ, though, about whether livestock grazing can be managed so as to minimize the harmful effects on sage grouse.

ODFW’s plan states that “moderate levels of (grazing) are generally thought to be compatible with maintenance” of grasses and other plants that sage grouse rely on.

Conservation groups, however, contend that eliminating grazing from certain areas is necessary if dwindling sage grouse populations are to recover.

Baker County has just a sliver of Oregon’s sage grouse habitat — 1,062 square miles, or 6 percent of the state’s total, according to ODFW.

The agency estimates that 83 percent of the bird’s habitat in the state is spread among the three vast counties of the southeast corner: Harney, Malheur and Lake.

Overall, sage grouse populations in Baker County have stayed relatively steady during the past decade or so, Myatt said.

Numbers have declined in the Virtue Flat area east of Baker City and near Unity Reservoir, but increased in the Malheur Reservoir and Huntington areas.