RENO, Nev. -- U.S. land managers have withdrawn more than 500 square miles of public land from a swath of eastern Nevada where oil and gas drilling leases are set to go to auction.
The move came after a judge blocked a Trump administration attempt to curtail protection of habitat for endangered sage grouse in seven states.
The acreage pulled from Tuesday's auction amounts to more than half of what the Bureau of Land Management initially planned to offer in Nevada.
The withdrawn area roughly corresponds to habitat designated in a 2015 sage grouse plan completed under President Barack Obama for Nevada and northeastern California.
The downsizing won the agency praise from conservationists who secured the court order in Idaho last month.
The Trump land-use plans finalized in March had removed the most protective sage grouse habitat designations across millions of acres. Administration officials also dropped requirements to prioritize leasing for oil and gas outside sage grouse habitat and allowed more waivers for drilling.
But on Oct. 16, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho, granted a temporary injunction sought by the Western Watersheds Project and other groups to block those plans after concluding such activities left unchecked were likely to harm the struggling bird species in the West.
The judge's order required the administration to revert to the more stringent rules adopted under Obama.
The auction of leases in Nevada initially covered 263 parcels across about 850 square miles.
Kemba Anderson, chief of the bureau's mineral resources branch, said she removed more than half of the proposed lease area from the auction on Oct. 28 "for further analysis to comply with the judge's order."
Leases for the remaining 380 square miles are still scheduled to be auctioned today.
Business on 11/12/2019