Group effort rules the roost in Wyoming, then Washington intervenes
On a gray, snowy morning in early May, Tom Christiansen keeps his eyes on the male greater sage-grouse dancing on the distant knoll and slowly reaches for his spotting scope on the truck floor.
“The bird is iconic,” says Mr. Christiansen, a self-proclaimed “grouse nerd” who picks up bird scat as if it were a $20 bill. He is the sage grouse program coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “It represents the big wide open spaces of the West,” says Christiansen. “I know that if we have sage-grouse on the landscape, we have a functioning ecosystem.”
He is far enough away to need the telescope-binocular hybrid, but he still whispers – careful not to disturb the birds on the lek, or breeding ground. When he picks up his scope, a crumpled news article is revealed. Only part of the headline, “ZINKE… DRAWS WYOMING IRE” is visible, the rest buried under other bird-watching equipment.
Since taking the helm of the US Interior Department, Ryan Zinke has upset a delicate balance of conservation and energy interests in Wyoming, throwing the fate of the greater sage-grouse into question. Following President Trump’s directive to prioritize energy production, Secretary Zinke has focused on identifying and eliminating any efforts that “unnecessarily burden” energy development. This focus has inevitably made a chicken-sized bird one of the most contentious aspects of Zinke’s 16 months in office.
Westerners say the Interior Department’s new energy commitment risks not only the health of the greater sage-grouse, but also the largest land conservation effort in US history. The 2015 greater sage-grouse plan
Protecting a bird – and Wyoming’s economyMeetings of unlike minds, with results Decisionmaking from far away
