Sage grouse meetings

The Bureau of Land Management plans to hold public meetings on sage grouse early next year in Central and Eastern Oregon. The meetings will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on the dates listed, but the BLM hasn’t determined the locations yet.

• Prineville, Jan. 6

• Burns, Jan. 7

• Ontario, Jan. 8

• Baker City, Jan. 9

• Lakeview, Jan. 13

As the deadline moves closer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the greater sage grouse should be a protected species, another federal agency is set late this week to release proposed land use plan amendments pertaining to the bird in Oregon.

Everyone with interest in sage grouse, from ranchers to environmentalists to county planners, is waiting to see what the Bureau of Land Management draft report will say and what land use options it will recommend for sage grouse here.

“A lot of people have had input into this,” said Joan Suther, BLM’s sage grouse project manager for Oregon.

The report should come out Friday and then be open for public comment for three months, she said. The BLM aims to have the report finalized by the end of next year. Suther declined to go into details of what is in the Oregon report but said recently released draft BLM sage grouse reports for Northern California and Nevada as well as Idaho and southwest Montana could offer a preview.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Suther said.

The Northern California and Nevada report calls for a balanced level of sage grouse habitat protection, restoration and enhancement while still allowing ongoing land use programs. The Idaho and southwest Montana report takes a similar approach but also considers blending recommendations from a task force set up by Idaho Gov. Butch Otter. The group recommends leaving land use plans as they are in Montana while designating three levels of sage grouse habitat in Idaho and putting land use restrictions on core habitat.

Depending on what the BLM report for Oregon says, there could be impacts on grazing, renewable power development, recreation and other uses on public land.

Under a court order, the Fish and Wildlife Service has until September 2015 to decide whether sage grouse should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The BLM, which oversees most of the public land that is home to sage grouse in the state, has been reworking management plans in an effort to avoid the listing of the bird, and Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office is leading a conservation partnership aimed at finding agreement among differing interests.

The bird, known for its unique courtship dance, is found in 11 western states — Oregon, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Sage grouse roam sagebrush-covered rangeland in Central and Eastern Oregon.

Earlier this year Deschutes County planners worked with their counterparts in six other counties around Central and Eastern Oregon to compile a report that describes the land use and development patterns relative to the bird, said Peter Gutowsky, principal planner for Deschutes County. The report found that the state’s land use rules have helped protect sage grouse.

“… We have adequate measures in place that can address sage grouse now and long-term,” he said.

The goal in Oregon is to maintain about 30,000 of the birds, said Dawn Davis, sage grouse conservation coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Hines.

“Right now populations (in Oregon) appear to be stable,” she said.

But there are threats to sage grouse that must be addressed, chief among them habitat fragmentation caused by wildfire and invasive weeds, such as cheat grass.

Between efforts with Kitzhaber’s office and federal agencies like the BLM, ranchers and environmentalists alike are hopeful there could be land use plans in Oregon that keep sage grouse off an endangered species list but still help the bird.

“To protect the best of the best (habitat),” said Dan Morse, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Desert Association in Bend, “that is what we are looking for, and I think that is what all of this is about.”

John O’Keefe, treasurer of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said his group wants to see a land use plan that ranchers can work with.

“We feel confident we can graze within the presence of grouse,” O’Keefe said.