Those of us who work on issues involving public lands grazing are driven by an awareness of its myriad impacts on wild lands and wildlife. With each passing grazing episode, more soils erode, more weeds move in, more beauty and biodiversity are lost.

We work to limit livestock harms as best we can through participation in agency processes, public education and litigation. Our hope is that livestock will be removed from public lands before too much more habitat is lost, and too many more weed invasions or destructive livestock projects are built. Once livestock are gone, the work on restoration, too, will be immense.

Meanwhile, threats to public lands intercede and must be dealt with if populations of sage grouse and other wildlife that we seek to protect are to persist. A new and unexpected threat to the wild lands of the sagebrush sea comes from an industry that should know better.

Wind energy is clean and can be environmentally friendly. However, two potential wind developments in Idaho, if built, will show a dark and destructive side to this industry in the interior West. These projects on Bureau of Land Management lands are located in the heart of critical sage grouse habitat and other important wildlife habitats.

BLM has authorized the placement of wind sampling towers in Browns Bench, a lovely, high-sagebrush, old-growth mountain mahogany and aspen-pocketed ridge just west of Salmon Falls Reservoir. Besides being the most important place for long-term persistence of sage grouse in the entire 1.5 million acres of Jarbidge BLM lands, there is a known density of nesting raptors in the scenic high cliffs that cap red rhyolite side canyons of this high plateau. Migratory songbirds abound.

Concerns over any wind development here are so great that even BLM's Lower Snake River District Resource Advisory Council wrote to BLM director Kathleen Clarke opposing placement of wind sampling towers, a foot in the door to future development of a massive wind farm. Yet, the wind energy company, instead of listening to an outpouring of public concern, has arrogantly and aggressively pursued an exclusive right-of-way at Browns Bench.

The energy-crazed BLM under the Bush Administration approved placement of 1 60-feet-tall sampling towers, ignoring its own RAC. Roads, power lines and other infrastructure here will doom sage grouse now inhabiting the area. Tall, vertical structures are anathema to sage grouse, sharp-tails and other grouse that evolved in open, treeless landscapes.

On Cotterell Mountain near Burley, placement of sampling towers occurred in a closed-door process and was approved by the BLM without any public involvement. Although the sampling is not finished, the energy company is preparing an EIS for development of a large wind farm. There are serious concerns about the impact of this project, too, on sage grouse and other wildlife.

There is no mitigation other than avoidance - don't do it! - for the impacts of wind farm development on wildlife at either of these sites.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines stress the importance of appropriate sites for wind facilities. Turbines are not to be placed in documented locations of species protected under the Endangered Species Act. (A petition to list sage grouse has been filed.) Fragmenting large blocks of continuous habitat is to be avoided.

The wind energy companies pushing these projects claim to be environmentally friendly. If that is the case, they must know Idaho has abundant alternative sites for wind energy facilities. Many areas on the margin of the Snake River Plain are sufficiently windy, fragmented with roads and development and infested with weeds. They have minimal wildlife values. Yet, instead of pursuing development in these areas, energy companies are greedily seeking sites with the most wind: high, remote ridges that are refuge for wildlife with little other habitat left.

Responsible wind energy development in the interior West must be based on the appropriate siting of wind facilities. Otherwise, we stand to lose sage grouse and sharp-tailed grouse populations, already beleaguered by livestock grazing and other factors, and untold numbers of hawks, eagles and migratory birds.

WWP and Idaho Bird Hunters have appealed the right-of-way for placement of the wind towers on Browns Bench. BLM's internal appeals court has denied our petition for stay. We can only hope that the wind energy industry polices itself, before public concern over these projects escalates and the industry makes two big mistakes.

Katie Fite is WWP's Biodiversity Director. She lives in Boise, Idaho.