After gaining significant protections for bighorn sheep on the Payette National Forest due to Advocates for the West's prior litigation...
Opening Brief filed on the last Great Basin sage-grouse stronghold
Date:
08/05/2011 
Advocates for the West continues to hold the federal government responsible for habitat destruction in the West.
In a brief filed last Friday, Advocates for the West's Senior Staff Attorney Todd Tucci took on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for violating federal laws as well as its own management plans and regulations.
Historically the Greater sage-grouse ranged across 12 western states and 3 Canadian provinces, interconnected by sagebrush habitat. Now gone from several states and continuing to dwindle, the current range is 44% of the historic range.
Five allotments in southwestern Idaho's Bruneau and Owyhee Field Offices, totaling almost 327,000 acres of mostly BLM-administered public lands, contain key habitat for the Greater sage-grouse. BLM decided to continue grazing on these already degraded public lands, finding no significant impact to the sage-grouse population, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
BLM failed to consider the landscape as a whole and that sage-grouse travel between field offices. BLM also failed to listen to their own biologists when it was shown that the degradation occurring was due to livestock overgrazing. Instead, BLM seemed to focus on appeasing private livestock interests versus caring for the public trust.
Read the Opening Brief below.
Advocates for the West is representing Western Watersheds Project in this case.
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