Record of decision and approved resource management plan amendments for the Great Basin region, including the greater sage-grouse sub-regions of Idaho and southwestern Montana, Nevada and northeastern California, Oregon, Utah

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This Record of Decision (ROD) is the culmination of an unprecedented effort to conserve Greater Sage-Grouse (GRSG) habitat on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It is consistent with the BLM’s multiple-use and sustained yield mission and the joint objective established by Federal and State leadership through the GRSG Task Force to conserve GRSG habitat on Federal, State, and private land such that additional protections under the Endangered Species Act may be avoided. This ROD and Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments (ARMPAs) are for the Great Basin region GRSG sub-regions of Idaho and southwestern Montana, Nevada and northeastern California, Oregon, and Utah. The ARMPAs include GRSG habitat management direction that avoids and minimizes additional disturbance in GRSG habitat management areas. Moreover, they target restoration of and improvements to the most important areas of habitat. Management under the ARMPAs is directed through land use allocations that apply to GRSG habitat. These allocations accomplish the following: eliminate most new surface disturbance in the most highly valued sagebrush ecosystem areas identified as Sagebrush Focal Areas; avoid or limit new surface disturbance in Priority Habitat Management Areas, of which Sagebrush Focal Areas are a subset; and minimize surface disturbance in General Habitat Management Areas. In addition to protective land use allocations in habitat management areas, the ARMPAs include a suite of management actions, such as establishing disturbance limits, GRSG habitat objectives, mitigation requirements, monitoring protocols, and adaptive management triggers and responses. They also include other conservation measures that apply throughout designated habitat management areas. The cumulative effect of these measures is to conserve, enhance, and restore GRSG habitat across the species’ remaining range in the Great Basin Region and to provide greater certainty that BLM resource management plan decisions in GRSG habitat in the Great Basin Region can lead to conservation of the GRSG and other sagebrush-steppe associated species in the region.

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ELECTRONIC FILE - Zoology, ELECTRONIC FILE - Ecology

SWAP (2/19/2016) citation (with some corrections to title only):
[BLM] Bureau of Land Management (US). 2015. Record of decision and approved resource management plan amendments for the Great Basin region, including the greater sage-grouse sub-regions of Idaho and southwestern Montana, Nevada and northeastern California, Oregon, Utah. [accessed 2015 Oct 16]. https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/eplanning/planAndProjectSite..... Washington (DC): Bureau of Land Management (US)