No protections for Gunnison sage grouse

By The AP
Monday, September 27, 2010

DENVER — Federal wildlife officials say the Gunnison sage-grouse should be protected but there aren’t enough resources to do so now.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said today that there is sufficient data to propose threatened or endangered status for the Gunnison sage grouse, which lives in southwest Colorado and extreme southeastern Utah. However, the agency says it won’t propose that the species be listed as such because it has to address other species it says have higher priority.

The Gunnison sage grouse resembles but is smaller than the greater sage grouse, another candidate for federal protection. The greater sage grouse occurs in several Western states including Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada.