BILLINGS, Mont. — A pair of lawsuits filed Monday target the Trump administration’s sale of oil and gas leases on huge swaths of Western public lands that contain crucial habitat for an imperiled bird.
Wildlife advocates asked courts to reverse lease sales on more than 1,300 square miles of land in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada, according to attorneys involved.
The legal actions also sought to block several upcoming sales unless the U.S. Interior Department conducts further environmental reviews. Those leases would total more than 1,800 square miles in the four states plus Idaho.
Many of the parcels in dispute are home to greater sage grouse, a chicken-sized, ground-dwelling bird that ranges across portions of 11 Western states.
Greater sage grouse populations drastically declined in recent decades, because of energy development that broke up the bird’s habitat, along with disease, livestock grazing and other causes. Its population once numbered in the millions but had fallen to fewer than 500,000 by 2015, according to wildlife officials.
Under former President Barack Obama, the Interior Department delayed lease sales on millions of acres of public lands largely because of sage grouse worries. In 2015, it adopted a set of wide-ranging plans meant to protect the best grouse habitat and keep the bird off the endangered species list.
Trump’s Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has placed a greater priority on energy development, including directives from the agency that modified restrictions imposed by the Obama administration.
Attorneys behind Monday’s lawsuits argued those modifications were improper and that Zinke’s agency unlawfully limited environmental reviews of lease sales.
“They are indiscriminately leasing everything that’s nominated in sage grouse habitat, without any determination beforehand that maybe these areas are particularly important” to the bird, said Michael Saul, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity
Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined comment on the matter.
Energy industry representatives have been strongly supportive of Zinke’s pro-energy agenda. They point out that even when land is leased for drilling, companies must abide by limitations on when they can drill to avoid disrupting grouse during breeding season.
“We realize there are some hoops we’re going to have to jump through if we’re going to develop the resource,” said Alan Olson, executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association.
