New federal rules aimed at protecting sage grouse habitats by limiting drilling, mining and renewable energy projects on nearly 1,200 square miles of Colorado public lands could be rolled back under a second Donald administration Trump.

On November 8, the United States Bureau of Land Management, which administers federally owned lands, updates finalized to protect sage-grouse habitat on approximately 65 million acres of agency-managed lands. The bird population has cratered by 80 percent since 1966, although it is not yet listed as endangered.

The sage grouse is found in the vast sagebrush expanses of northwest Colorado, a habitat threatened by wildfires, drought and development. In spring, hundreds of male birds converge on open areas called “leks” for elaborate mating displays.

“Sage grouse like the same lands where we have our (oil and gas),” said Kathleen Griffin, grouse conservation program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The Bureau of Land Management balances competing uses of millions of acres through resource management plans that outline how it will protect wildlife like sage grouse and permit other activities, including drilling, mining and leisure. Finding this balance proved tricky: both fossil fuel Supporters and the renewable energy industry opposed the final sage grouse protection rules and said they were too restrictive for businesses.

“This administration has decided to ban activity in settlement areas even when the strict stipulations are enforced and then claims that companies are avoiding them anyway,” wrote Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a group fossil fuel industry, in a statement to the CPR. News. “The DOI’s misleading messages are a means of justifying their actions, not a reflection of reality. »

“The updated plan does not reflect this balance and unnecessarily restricts the development of wind, solar, battery storage and transmission, undermining the ability to deploy much-needed clean energy infrastructure,” Phil said Sgro, spokesperson for the American Clean Power Association, an organization specializing in renewable energy. energy industry group, wrote in an email to CPR News.

THE rules amend dozens of separate resource management plans across the West to protect bird breeding areas from drilling, mining and renewable projects, like large wind and solar farms, with few exceptions.

The amendments that apply to public lands in Colorado prohibit surface drilling or renewable energy projects, and accompanying power lines and roads, within a certain distance of bird mating sites and other critical territories. The toughest restrictions apply to about 4 million acres in the West, including 5,000 acres in Colorado, which will be completely closed to large wind and solar projects and surface drilling. Griffin said the goal is to keep the bird’s territory intact.

“Grouses are a species that don’t like small, postage stamp-shaped areas of habitat,” Griffin said. “They love these wide open spaces. They don’t like power lines, they don’t like roads.

The second Trump administration appears eager to dismantle protections, according to researchers, environmental groups and public statements by the new president and his team.

Revise, rewrite, relax

On Thursday, President-elect Trump nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to head the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management. Burgum, the top official of a major oil and gas state, has been a vocal supporter of the fossil fuel industry and a proponent of opening more federal lands to drilling and relaxing environmental regulations, who, according to him, harmed the country.

In 2017, the Trump administration reversed sage grouse protections adopted during the Obama administration, but a federal judge blocked the reversal.

The new Republican-led Congress could also use Congressional Review Act to reverse agency actions that occurred in the final days of a previous administration. But that scenario seems unlikely because of how the law works, according to Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation organization.

“So if Congress tried to use the ARC to hit the sage grouse (plan), Congress would basically say we’re going to take it upon ourselves to rewrite 70 individual resource management plans,” Weiss said. “And it’s crazy.”

Project 2025, a conservative policy roadmap written in part by former Trump administration officials, including William Perry Pendley, the former acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, also propose to take management of the sage grouse away from the federal government. President-elect Trump distanced himself of Project 2025 during the campaign but has since exploited at least two contributors to the project for his new administration.

David Zalubowsk/AP

Michael Pappas, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said lifting stricter sage grouse protections could take years because of the length of the environmental review process .

“The sage grouse environmental review process has been underway for some time,” Pappas said. “Canceling it or proposing other changes would probably take some time. None of this happens in the blink of an eye.

Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group, said the Biden administration is not doing enough to permanently strengthen protections for the sage grouse.

“Clearly, the Biden administration has missed a big opportunity to bring sage-grouse habitat protection up to the standards of the best available science,” Molvar said.

Future energy development on Colorado public lands is uncertain

The Bureau of Land Management oversees 8.3 million acres of land and more than 27 million acres of federal mineral estate that can be leased for mining, drilling and other energy developments, according to the agency – most of which are located on the western slope. Approximately 750,000 acres of these lands are considered critical sage grouse habitat.

Under the first Trump administration, the agency opened up leasing millions of more acres of public land for drilling or mining than under the Biden administration. Some environmental groups fear the same thing could happen again, undermining commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President-elect Trump has repeatedly expressed the desire to increase drilling on public lands.

“President Trump has declared open hunting on our public lands and waters,” said Michael Freeman, senior attorney at the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “President-elect Trump has made it clear that he plans to take the same approach this time around. »

But just because land is offered for lease doesn’t mean it will be developed, due to the difficulty of extracting the remaining oil or gas.

“The conventional thinking is that the best land for resource extraction has already been extracted,” said Pappas, a law professor at CU-Boulder. “So it may be that the administration politically wants to say that the site is open for rental, but there just aren’t many buyers.”

In April, the Biden administration finalized two major rules on public lands that prioritized conservation and increased drilling fees. A ruler has made conservation a priority in how the agency manages its lands, along with other uses like mining or drilling. Another ruler raised fees for oil and gas permits and increased the amount of money companies must keep in reserve in case they orphans or abandon their wells.

According to Freeman, both of these rules are likely under threat, but it would likely take years to completely dismantle them.

“President Trump can’t just roll them back with the wave of a pen,” Freeman said. “It will have to comply with the law and go through the normal rulemaking and (environmental review) processes if it wants to do that.”

Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, expects to see other recent declarations of public lands in Colorado weakened or even eliminated.

In 2022, President Biden established Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Eagle County. Presidents can unilaterally create and remove national monuments, which are considered public lands. In April, the federal government removed more than 200,000 acres of public land from drilling or mining over 20 years in central Colorado, in an area known as the Thompson Divide.

“Whether it’s trying to revoke the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, or erasing the Thompson Divide protections…I imagine all of these actions could or will be attacked in some way other,” Weiss said.