DENVER (March 6, 2018) – The National Wildlife Federation today sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management to protest the omission of comments by tens of thousands of the organization’s supporters from consideration in a new report on federal sage-grouse conservation plans. 

The letter to Brian Steed, BLM deputy director of programs and policy, asks that the report be amended to acknowledge the comments and ensure all the voices, including Western sportsmen and women, are heard on saving the bird and sagebrush lands.

“Westerners have watched the federal government make unbridled attacks on the effort to save greater sage-grouse and sagebrush lands—and now the Department of Interior is trying to prevent us from exercising our legal and formal right to speak up for wildlife, our public lands and way of life,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, the National Wildlife Federation’s associate vice president for public lands. “’If the BLM is hiding or tossing aside comments from more than 37,000 National Wildlife Federation supporters and members, how many more voices defending sage-grouse are being squelched? 

“The Interior Department needs to fix this breach of faith with the public. And it needs to honor the deal made more than two years ago to save sage-grouse and sagebrush lands,” Stone-Manning added.

The National Wildlife Federation and its state affiliates are running TV, radio and online ads in outlets across the West and in Washington, D.C., in support of the sage-grouse plans. The plans were developed with help from Westerners of all stripes to save the bird and a landscape that supports mule deer, elk, pronghorns, bighorn sheep and more than 300 other species. 

Link to the TV ad: http://tiny.cc/honorthedeal