NEWS RELEASE

Conservation Organizations Petition to List Greater Sage Grouse Under Endangered Species Act
Habitat Loss, New Threats Prompt Call for Federal Protection

Twenty-one conservation organizations, including the Sierra Club, submitted a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today to list the Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) as “threatened” or “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. The species has suffered declines of 45 percent to 80 percent over the past 20 years due to habitat loss and fragmentation.

"The sage grouse is a valuable game bird as well as an important part of America's outdoor heritage, and we must seek to reverse its decline using all the tools available,” said Mike Smith, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Wildlife and Endangered Species Committee. “The Endangered Species Act is one of those tools."

The sage grouse is a striking and charismatic bird that inhabits sagebrush ecosystems in nine western states. The species’ utter dependence on vast areas of healthy sagebrush habitat makes it the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.” Where the grouse struggle to survive, the landscape has suffered serious damage.

The species’ historic range closely conformed to the distribution of tall and short sagebrush on the prairie sagebrush steppe (the “Sagebrush Sea”) covering parts of 16 western states and three Canadian provinces. However, since 1900 the distribution of sage grouse has been greatly reduced, with extirpation of populations at the periphery of their range. Sage grouse no longer occur in Arizona, British Columbia, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Today, the total sage grouse population is estimated at 140,000 individuals, representing only about 8 percent of historic numbers.

Remaining sage grouse populations suffer from habitat degradation resulting from urban and agricultural conversion, invasive species, altered fire regimes, unsustainable livestock grazing and other causes. New threats, such as increased energy development on the Rocky Mountain Front, persistent drought and the West Nile encephalitis virus found in sage grouse in Montana and Wyoming threaten to reduce sage grouse populations even further.

“The Bush Administration has prioritized resource extraction over conservation on public lands, and that has increased the pressure on sage grouse populations now contending with West Nile disease, drought and all the hardships associated with degraded habitat,” said Mark Salvo, Grasslands and Deserts Advocate for American Lands Alliance.

Protecting and recovering sage grouse and restoring sagebrush habitat would also benefit a family of other sensitive sagebrush obligate species in the West, such as the sagebrush vole, sage sparrow, sagebrush lizard and pygmy rabbit.

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Complete information about Greater Sage Grouse and the petition is available at www.sagebrushsea.org.

American Lands Alliance
Mark Salvo 503-757-4221, mark@americanlands.org

Biodiversity Conservation Alliance
Jeff Kessler 307-742-7978, jkessler@igc.org

Center for Biological Diversity
Noah Greenwald, M.S. 503-243-6643, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org

Center for Native Ecosystems
Jacob Smith 970-527-8993, prebles@indra.com

Forest Guardians
Nicole J. Rosmarino, Ph.D. 505-988-9126 x 156, nrosmari@fguardians.org

The Fund for Animals
Andrea Lococo 307-859-8840, alococo@fund.org

Gallatin Wildlife Association
Glenn Hockett 406-586-1729, glhockett@mcn.net

Great Old Broads for Wilderness
Veronica Egan 970-385-9577, ronni@greatoldbroads.org

Hells Canyon Preservation Council
Brett Brownscombe 541-963-3950, brett@hellscanyon.org

The Larch Company
Andy Kerr 541-201-0053, andykerr@andykerr.net

The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides
Caroline Cox 541-344-5044 x 24, ccox@pesticide.org

Northwest Ecosystem Alliance
Dave Werntz 360-671-9950 x 14, dwerntz@ecosystem.org

Oregon Natural Desert Association
Bill Marlett 541-330-2638, bmarlett@onda.org

Oregon Natural Resources Council
Tim Lillebo 541-382-2616, tl@onrc.org

Predator Defense Institute
Brooks Fahy 541-937-4261, info@predatordefense.org

Sierra Club
Bart Semcer 202-675-6696, bart.semcer@sierraclub.org
Mike Smith 303-497-8346, mike.smith@sierraclub.org

Sinapu
Wendy Keefover-Ring 303-447-8655 x 1, wendy@sinapu.org

Western Fire Ecology Center
Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D. 541-302-6218, fire@efn.org

Western Watersheds Project
Jon Marvel 208-788-2290, jon@westernwatersheds.org

Wild Utah Project
James Catlin 801-328-3550, wup@xmission.com

Wildlands CPR
Bethanie Walder 406-543-955, wildlandscpr@wildlandscpr.org