"The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with plans to work around a federal court order and offer tens of thousands of acres of greater sage grouse habitat in planned oil and gas lease sales early next year.
BLM announced yesterday it plans to offer more than 170,000 acres of greater sage grouse habitat that it pulled from a scheduled December lease sale in Utah.
This time, however, it will include 30-day public comment and protest periods, instead of a shortened public involvement timeline of only 10 days that a federal judge blocked, at least temporarily, in September.
The March 26 oil and gas lease sale will include 156 parcels covering 217,519 acres in northern and eastern Utah. The vast majority — 116 parcels covering 173,464 acres — were pulled from a scheduled lease sale next month, said Ryan Sutherland, a BLM spokesman in Utah."
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