Keep Endangered Status for Gunnison Sage Grouse

Conservation groups today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to designate the Gunnison sage grouse as a “threatened” rather than “endangered” species under the Endangered Species Act. The agency’s less protective designation allows it to craft a rule creating broad exemptions for continued oil and gas development and other activities that threaten the grouse, which was originally proposed as an endangered species in January 2013 but formally listed as threatened in a rule published only today.

“Before this stunning reversal, the Fish and Wildlife Service had recognized the Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species for 14 years,” said Amy Atwood, endangered species legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The reversal is not based on more grouse in more places but rather on vague promises by those with a direct stake in destroying the grouse’s habitat. This is just too much of a fox guarding the henhouse situation.”

The Gunnison sage grouse’s total range has declined to 7 percent of its historic range, with most of the remaining populations in danger of disappearing. The Service has acknowledged for 14 years the species is in need of protection under the Endangered Species Act.

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