The 10-page report by state biologists from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota warned that the implications of the most recent science for managing oil and gas development impacts on sage-grouse are clear: 

• the Bureau of Land Management's current protections for sage-grouse attached to oil and gas leases are inadequate to protect the species from harm;
  

• so-called "No Surface Occupancy" stipulations for oil and gas drilling and seasonal limits on drilling activity in sage-grouse habitat are not enough on their own to protect the species;
  

• protecting "core areas" of habitat for sage-grouse is especially important, and identifying these areas should be a priority for all the Western states.
  

Following last year's finding that the 2005 decision to refuse to list the greater sage-grouse as endangered was inappropriately influenced by now disgraced Bush appointee Julie MacDonald, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service was court-ordered to start another 12-month review of whether the grouse deserved federal protection.

The Casper Star-Tribune reported on the state biologist's report in several articles last week.  The Tribune quoted Ben Deeble, sage grouse project coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation, as saying that the panel's report confirms that more limitations should be applied to oil and gas development in order to prevent the sage grouse from being listed under the Endangered Species Act. 

"What the (Bureau of Land Management) has been applying, in terms of common stipulations to protect sage grouse, are leading to their local extinction," Deeble said. He added that  if federal land managers do not impose more stringent standards on the oil and gas industry based on the most recent science, energy development could push the bird toward listing under the Endangered Species Act.

"If this adjustment isn't made to energy development, it puts a whole lot of other stakeholders in the West at risk -- ranchers, farmers, hunters," said Deeble in the Star-Tribune article.