Judge strikes down US energy leasing rules in bird habitat

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles.

Judge Brian Morris said the Interior Department did not do enough to encourage development outside of areas with greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose numbers have dropped dramatically in recent decades.

The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in Montana and Wyoming. That means officials will have to return millions of dollars in sales proceeds to companies that purchased the leases.

The leases at issue already had been invalidated in separate cases pending in other courts. But the latest ruling, handed down late Friday, appears to go further and strike at the administration's broader energy policies.

”The errors here occurred at the beginning of the oil and gas lease sale process, infecting everything that followed," Morris wrote.

Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for Interior's Bureau of Land Management, said Tuesday that officials were reviewing the decision.

Sage grouse range across about 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometers) in parts of 11 Western U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Their numbers plummeted in recent decades due to energy development, disease and other factors.

The birds are known for an elaborate mating ritual in which males fan their tails and puff out yellow air sacs in their chests as they strut around breeding grounds known as leks.

Under former President Barack Obama, the Interior Department delayed lease sales on millions of acres of public land largely because of...