For Immediate Release
December 22, 2025
Contact:
Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project, (307) 399-7910, emolvar@westernwatersheds.org
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration today released a series of new sage grouse Resource Management Plan Amendments covering Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Utah, California, and Nevada. The new plan amendments follow Environmental Impacts Statements left unfinished by the Biden administration.
“These sage grouse plan amendments are designed to strip away any habitat protections that might possibly get in the way of the industrial-scale exploitation of public lands inhabited by sage grouse, whether by oil corporations or the livestock industry, even as sage grouse populations continue to decline,” said Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Sage grouse habitat protections also shielded many other species, from elk and mule deer to sage thrashers and pygmy rabbit, so this move to throw open public lands to the commercial use of sagebrush habitats will be a disaster for all types of wildlife.”
The 7-inch grass height standard that provides hiding cover in sage grouse nesting habitats—a protection against excessive grazing by commercial livestock operations—has been stripped under all Trump plan amendments except in Montana and the Dakotas. While the original sage grouse plans included a number of measurable benchmarks for suitable vegetation, language buried in Appendix 4 of the plan amendments effectively strips those requirements by making them optional, stating that it is “inappropriate to use a single indicator” to “determine overall habitat suitability.” This allows exceedances of individual habitat criteria to occur without violating the plan.
“Habitat objectives, which formerly included a 7-inch grass height requirement based on scientific studies, have been demoted to an optional consideration buried in the appendices rather than required standards,” said Molvar. “The stripping of the 7-inch grass height objective, and demotion of habitat objectives from required benchmarks to optional targets that can be violated without consequence, are designed to accelerate the overgrazing of sage grouse habitats by private livestock interests.”
In the new plan amendments, the agency replaced “No Surface Occupancy” requirements in Priority Habitats with a menu ofoptions, including less-protective alternatives: Controlled Surface Use (essentially unrestricted drilling and construction) and Timing Limitation Stipulations (restricting only the season during which habitats can be industrialized through drilling wells and constructing roads and pipelines). “The new plans shift the most sensitiveareas of designated Priority Habitats from a prohibition on surface development to potentially open to industrial-scale oil and gas fields with only symbolic habitat protections that do nothing to prevent the habitat destruction, and this will result in emptying public lands of sage grouse and other sensitive wildlife,” said Molvar.
The plan amendments include other failures to provide much-needed protections to critical sage grouse habitats. For example, in Wyoming, four key sage grouse habitat areas found to qualify for Area of Critical Environmental Concern designation were denied ACEC status, including the well-known Golden Triangle area extending northward from South Pass.
“Western Watersheds Project and our allies will be analyzing the new plan amendments in detail to see how far they go to gut sage grouse habitat protections across the West, and to determine whether they fully comply with federal law and regulation,” said Molvar. “At this point, the prospects for sage grouse survival on public lands look bleak, and Endangered Species Act protection for the bird will probably be necessary as population declines accelerate with this further gutting of sagebrush habitat protections.”
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