BATTLE MOUNTAIN - Lander County commissioners unanimously approved at their May 23 meeting the signing of a final draft of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the county and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the county to coordinate its efforts in the development of a Resource Management Plan (RMP) and Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Greater Sage Grouse National Planning Strategy.
The MOU was approved at the July 26, 2012, commission meeting but was never signed due to minor changes that needed to be inserted into the final document.
The MOU that came before the commissioners at their May 23 meeting contained those changes. Due to the suggestion of a member of the audience, the word "cooperating" in the MOU was replaced with "coordinating."
By not signing the MOU, the county would have limited its participation in the submission of comments and input into the planning process, according to the commission meeting packet.
There were around 15 local ranchers at the meeting. Kent Bloomer, weed management specialist for the BLM and a Public Lands Use Advisory Committee (PLUAC) representative, was also at the commission meeting to encourage commissioners to sign the MOU.
"I'm here today to facilitate the process of entering into an MOU between Lander County and the BLM regarding the development of the Resource Management Plan amendments and Environmental Impact Statement and alternatives for the proposed Greater Sage Grouse Planning Strategy Great Basin Region Nevada Northeast California Subregion and this MOU would provide legal and regulatory responsibility to participate with the lead agency," Bloomer told commissioners.
Before commissioners voted, Elko County Commissioner Grant Gerber gave a presentation on the Elko County Devils Gate Ranch Greater Sage Grouse Preservation and Rehabilitation Pilot Project where predator control is being implemented on more than 15,000 acres of private land belonging to Ken Bowler to show that predators and wildfires are the biggest threat to sage grouse. Cattle grazing will also be implemented to show that fuel reduction limits the wildfire threat.
"We have a goal and that goal is to develop a pilot project to monitor the effects of historical grazing, predator control and range management methods and their impacts on the sage grouse populations and habitat," he said.
Gerber encouraged increased grazing to reduce wildfire threats. He said that last year 600,000 acres burned in Nevada. He added that wildfires are growing in size each year.
"We are pushing the BLM to start grazing it historically so we eliminate the fires," he said. "These are fires that have occurred over the last few years. The whole area outside of the private property (Devils Gate) has burned up and we cannot continue to do that because they are burning up sage grouse. With the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), we did an evaluation ... at least, somewhere over 20 percent of all active leks have been burned over in the last 10 or 15 years and another 20 or 30 percent of fires have been within two miles of the lek so the best sage grouse populations in the state are burning up because of lack of grazing."
Gerber told commissioners that the pilot project has significantly reduced raven populations.
"For the last seven weeks we've been working with the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the U.S. Department of Agriculture animal control and we've reduced the raven population in our pilot project by 80 or 90 percent, and we don't have the final figures so I better say 80," Gerber said. "I think it's going to be closer to 90 and we've been reducing other predators and the biologists are telling us that we're going to have a bumper crop of sage grouse if we don't get some chilling snow and stuff that kills the little ones because they think that the eggs are going to hatch out."
He continued, "The eggs in past - 90 percent of sage grouse eggs are taken by predators and ravens take 60 percent of the 90 percent so ravens are the worst predator and we've now learned that we have a lot of red fox in Elko County that was never there before and that
- See MOU, Page 14 -
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they are the second worst, then coyotes and badgers and such, but we are determined to give sage grouse a chance."
This pilot project is part of the Elko County Greater Sage Grouse Management and Conservation and Strategy Plan developed by Elko County commissioners.
"The (Elko) county commission recognizes and embraces the importance of the sage grouse populations to the history and culture of Elko County," Gerber told Lander County commissioners. "We also recognize the importance of conservation, preservation and rehabilitation of sagebrush habitat not only to the sage grouse but to other sagebrush dependent wildlife. This plan, this strategy, provides measures and strategies to help ensure that sage grouse and wildlife habitat is protected and rehabilitated through education and non-regulatory methods. The Elko County Commission has also provided information establishing that the sage grouse should not be listed as an endangered or threatened species."
Gerber urged Lander County commissioners to implement a similar pilot program in their county.
"Hopefully, ... you'll perhaps think it through and want to do a pilot project in your county and if one doesn't fit here then perhaps get involved with ours and in the meantime we'll keep you informed as we go forward because we are convinced that the sage grouse is the single greatest threat to the resource industries of the west right now and this is the first time ... that local government and private property owners have joined together to look at an endangered species and do something about it rather than just talk," Gerber said.
The mission statement for the project reads, "To establish a controlled sage steppe habitat area with known greater sage grouse populations and implement historic agricultural, grazing and predator control methods and policies to determine their affects to the greater sage grouse populations and habitat."
The scope of the project is to identify and develop an area utilizing historical agricultural uses, implement historical predator control programs within the project area and expand on the baseline sage grouse population and habitat research completed by NDOW.
Its scope also includes identifying and monitoring lek areas and monitoring predator populations in the project area as well as identifying the wildfire threat in the project area.
The goals of the project are to add to the baseline data developed by NDOW, determine the effects of the historical agriculture, grazing and predator control to the greater sage grouse populations and habitat, increase sage grouse populations, control the predation of sage grouse eggs and young and reduce wildfire possibility by fuel reduction.
There is also a similar pilot project on the South Fork Indian Reservation, south of Elko.
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