Colorado's draft plan (called the Colorado Greater Sage-Grouse Conservation Plan, or the CCP for short) is huge.  Seven major sections and almost 500 pages, it includes a full review of the biology and life history of the bird, an assessment of all the threats impacting its current status, and hundreds of specific recommended "conservation strategies" addressing everything from the need to keep oil and gas well pads off sage-grouse lek sites to the need to protect populations from West Nile Virus.

The Division of Wildlife says the plan is designed to act as "a bridge between local plans and national sage-grouse conservation strategy."  The plan calls for cooperation from federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and from local entities like county governments and even private landowners in sagebrush country.

The draft will likely be revised to some degree before being issued in its final form, but if fully implemented in its current form, it could go a long way toward truly conserving greater sage-grouse in Colorado.  The problem, however, is that it is unlikely to be fully implemented, given the pressures that industry will put on agencies like the BLM and the state to allow the maximum amount of oil and gas drilling activity with the minimum restrictions.  Even though there is more and more new scientific evidence that sage-grouse need a significant buffer between their leks (mating grounds) and the nearest disruptive activity like oil and gas drilling or road building, oil and gas industry representatives already cry foul about the meager buffers currently in use on public lands.  These insufficient protections for sage-grouse, grouped under the rubric of "mitigations" for habitat disturbances, do not go far enough to protect sage-grouse from population declines, and new data is emerging from around the West that corroborates this.  The Colorado Conservation Plan (the CCP) even examines the history of the currently used buffer size and finds no scientific evidence that supports its use as an effective protection for sage-grouse.

The issue of whether or not the Colorado Conservation Plan is followed as much as it needs to be is vital:  the true test of this plan will be whether it changes management practices on the ground and leads to a reversal of the current trends of population decline and habitat loss in Colorado.  But in the meantime, the draft of the plan now available contains some incredibly valuable support for the most basic and important facts about greater sage-grouse conservation.

For example, the plan acknowledges that conserving greater sage-grouse is about conserving sagebrush habitat.  That may sound obvious, but it has been ignored for far too long in previous efforts to save the sage-grouse from extinction.  We simply cannot conserve a species like greater sage-grouse, which is so completely dependent on healthy sagebrush country, without protecting its habitat.  The plan also acknolwedges that sage-grouse will need large, intact segments of sagebrush habitat free from disturbances like oil and gas drilling in order to survive and thrive.  That too may seem obvious, but many mitigations and conservation strategies before now have relied on simply moving well pads or roads or powerlines a short way off from the most sensitive habitat (the leks) while ignoring the need to conserve other types of sagebrush habitat (like winter habitat, which is different from lekking grounds and even more rare) and ignoring the effects of chopping up the landscape into fragmented bits by allowing development in every part of it.  As described already, the plan also acknowledges how insufficient the current, most commonly used mitigation measures for sage-grouse are, and that sage-grouse are going to need buffers around their most sensitive habitat of at least 4 miles to avoid being pushed further toward extinction.  The oil and gas industry in particular is likely to rail again that bald admission of the truth of the sage-grouse's current situation, but just because it's difficult for some to accept doesn't make it untrue.

With these truths held in mind, not as self-evident but as positions backed by the best available science, the Colorado Conservation Plan could be a giant step forward for the greater sage-grouse.  If the plan does nothing else, it will have set the starting point for all our future conversations, as a state and as a region, about how to conserve a native of the Sagebrush Sea and one of the most iconic and loved wildlife species of the West.

Center for Native Ecosystems and many other conservation organizations submitted extensive comments to the Division of Wildlife on their draft of the plan.

Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists reported last week that they didn't find any new lynx kittens this year.  Last year saw a serious dip in lynx reproduction as well, down to 11 from 50 in 2005, although it included the first second generation lynx reproduction (lynx babies growing up to have their own lynx babies).  One theory is that the lack of reproduction this year is related to a drop in the number of snowshoe hares, an important source of prey for the lynx.  This might make sense, but some of the research found that lynx in the Southern Rockies are far less reliant on snowshoe hare than lynx in the northern part of the range, so a decline in hares shouldn't necessarily mean trouble for lynx.  If a declining prey base is causing the drop in reproduction, it will only compound the critical long-term lynx recovery need:  protecting key lynx habitat.  By all appearances, Governor Owens and his administration were allergic to even mentioning the word "habitat," much less acknowledging its importance, but the science clearly points to the need for sufficient high quality habitat if the lynx is to thrive in Colorado over the long term.  Here in Colorado, most lynx habitat is on Forest Service land, and the Forest Service (which answers to the Bush administration) has been pretty hostile to protecting lynx habitat.  Perhaps their most colorful effort to undermine lynx recovery was when David Tenny, a Bush administration political appointee, ordered the elimination of lynx protections on the White River National Forest.  Perhaps their most destructive effort is a Forest Service-supported proposal for a new 10,000-person city along the Continental Divide near Wolf Creek Pass (in the middle of a critical lynx movement corridor).  And the Forest Service is now years overdue on a promised lynx management plan for the region (and their draft plan, introduced in 2005, was roundly criticized because of its gaping loopholes).  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's refusal to identify key habitat in Colorado isn't helping, nor is their ongoing refusal even to adopt a recovery plan providing the Colorado Division of Wildlife with a road map to recovery and eventual removal from the Endangered Species list.  We are hopeful that the new Governor and his new natural resources deputy, Harris Sherman, will take more seriously the biological needs of the lynx.  With strong leadership from the state, we really can recover this magnificent part of Colorado's natural heritage.

There isn't anything new about politics interfering in science, but during the last several years of the Bush administration we have witnessed a brazen disregard for science unprecedented in recent memory.  We began our "Restoring Integrity in Science" Campaign about two years ago to shed light on the increasingly aggressive suppression and manipulation of science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, to fix the politically motivated decisions, and to create better buffers protecting science from political interference.  In partnership with several other organizations around the country, we broke the story in a Washington Post expose back in October.  This led to an Inspector General investigation corroborating the Washington Post claims.  The political appointee responsible for much of the mischief, Julie MacDonald, resigned.  Congressional hearings followed the Inspector General investigation (and continue to this day).  Key Congressional leaders are demanding that the Secretary of the Interior undertake genuine reforms (not the whitewash proposal he announced in June).  And we are seeing important bills introduced in Congress that would help protect science from politics.

Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) announced plans last week to introduce just such a bill.  The "Transparent Reporting Under ESA Listing Act" is intended to require an account of agency employees' involvement and opinions on listing decisions.  The idea is to make sure that the scientists' voices are heard even when politics intervenes.  We haven't seen the bill and so haven't been able to assess how effective it will be, but the goal is laudable.  We look forward to seeing this and other similar bills introduced, an energetic discussion on Capital Hill about the best ways to protect science from politics at the Department of Interior and elsewhere in the federal government, and passage of a good package of bills before the Congressional session ends.