Groups Challenge Trump Land Plans Cutting Sage-Grouse Safeguards

Seven environmental groups on Monday asked a federal judge to enjoin and remand the Trump administration’s land plans that rolled back protections for the greater sage-grouse in nine Western states.

The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, are challenging a series of amendments to Bureau of Land Management resource management plans in Montana, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. The amendments prioritize oil and gas development, mining, and other uses over habitat protections for the greater sage-grouse.

The chicken-like bird has been declining throughout the West, but it is not protected as an endangered species. The Trump administration last year updated 2015 plans for sage-grouse habitat after the Biden administration moved to increase safeguards.

The BLM declined to comment Monday.

The bureau violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it failed to explain the reduced safeguards, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act for failing to sustain wildlife under the amendments, and the National Environmental Policy Act for failing to study the environmental effects of the changes.

Habitat loss, partly from oil and gas drilling and other development, has imperiled the bird, which also faces threats from drought, wildfires, and invasive species. The greater sage-grouse depends on the sagebrush-steppe ecosystem common in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and surrounding states.

The greater sage-grouse has relied on state and federal efforts to protect its habitat in order to avoid granting Endangered Species Act protections to the bird.

“Developed in close partnership with Western governors and state wildlife managers, the approved plans reflect the latest science and address state requests for better alignment on adaptive management and other conservation strategies,” the BLM said in December as it granted oil and gas companies greater access to 65 million acres of federal land.

But the plans aim to “nail the coffin shut” on the greater sage-grouse, said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“There’s no scientific support for claims that these plans will save sage grouse, and no public support for them either,” Spivak said in a statement. “The greater sage grouse’s fate is tied to hundreds of other animals who all rely on the Sagebrush Sea.”

The center is joined in the lawsuit by the Gallatin Wildlife Association, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Rocky Mountain Wild, the Sierra Club, the Western Watersheds Project, and WildEarth Guardians.

Environmental groups are represented by Advocates for the West.

The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.

The case is Center for Biological Diversity v. Germann, D. Mont., No. 4:26-cv-00021, 3/2/26