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BLM withdraws acreage from Nevada O&G lease sale

by Erika Green

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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has pulled 332,247 acres from the Nov. 12 oil and natural gas lease sale in Nevada due to a court order blocking Trump administration plans to gut protections for the greater sage-grouse, Kallanish Energy reports.

The federal agency had planned to offer 263 parcels totaling 547,969 acres in Nevada’s Lincoln, Nye and White Pine counties.

The action was announced by eco-groups fighting to help the troubled bird. Last month, a federal judge had blocked Trump administration plans to allow expanded drilling, mining and other activities across 51 million acres of greater sage-grouse habitat in seven western states.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho, approved a preliminary injunction that at least temporarily protects the bird on public lands in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California and Oregon. Those states have the greatest numbers of greater sage-grouse.

The judge said the Trump administration had failed to analyze how the bird would be harmed under the March 2019 land-use plans prepared by the BLM and approved by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Those plans reduced sharply protections for the greater sage-grouse, critics said.

The injunction had been sought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians and Prairie Hills Audubon Society.

Last March, the Trump administration said it had finalized sweeping changes to federal land use plans in the West that will ease restrictions on energy companies, while protecting the sage-grouse on 60 million acres of sagebrush steppe.

Environmentalists decried the change, saying it would harm the chicken-sized bird, whose numbers are shrinking.

The Trump changes reverse plans by the Obama administration and were supported by both Democrat and Republican governors.

The bird’s population has dropped by 90% because of drilling, mining, ranching and other disturbances. The BLM says the bird’s population once numbered in the millions but has dwindled to between 200,000 and 500,000 birds across 173 million acres.

The lease sale will be conducted at www.energynet.com.

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