More than 400,000 acres in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah are now off-limits to energy exploration or any other kind of development to protect the endangered Gunnison sage grouse, The Associated Press reported.
The federal government made the announcement this week as precursor to a much larger fight over another species of the bird that ranges across 11 Western states, according to the AP.
The Bureau of Land Management directive released formalizes protections the government had already implemented to preserve the Gunnison grouse on Monday, but a decision on whether to list it as an endangered species is due in November, the AP reported.
BLM spokesman Steven Hall said that the protected land falls in 800,000 acres that have been identified as the bird's general range, according to the AP.
The Gunnison sage grouse only lives in a small sliver of Colorado and Utah and the estimated 4,500 animals remaining are about one-tenth of its original population, and because it is so depleted its habitat has to be aggressively protected, Hall said, the AP reported.
A similar species, the greater sage grouse, has more of an impact on the West, but its range is far bigger, covering 160 million acres in 11 Western states, according to the AP. That land includes many of the areas under oil and gas development as part of the ongoing energy boom.
"We don't see as many conflicts between energy production and habitat protection with the Gunnison sage grouse as we do with the greater sage grouse," Hall said, the AP reported. A decision on whether to list the greater sage grouse as endangered is due next year.
Western states fear that the bird will receive federal protection, inhibiting development and ranching in huge parts of their territory, and the BLM's protections for the Gunnison sage grouse are already causing economic damage, said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, according to the AP. The steps the federal government will take if the greater sage grouse is listed will be more devastating.
