LANDER - A wildlife advocate says the Bureau of Land Management has failed to strictly enforce seasonal restrictions meant to protect sage grouse on the Pinedale Anticline gas field.

And the Bush administration's policy of fast-tracking oil and gas development in the Cowboy State has also begun to fast-track the bird's disappearance from the planet, he argues.

Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist and sage grouse expert with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said at the very least the BLM should be strictly enforcing its seasonal restrictions on development activities on the Pinedale Anticline - which, he says, it hasn't done. And the agency should also tailor its new plan toward "maximizing sage grouse survival, rather than maximizing the profits of the oil and gas drillers."

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management say the new governing document for oil and gas development on the Anticline, which is due to be completed by the end of August or the beginning of September, will be an improvement over the 2000 decision and will, they hope, help maintain a healthy sage grouse population there.

Although the new plan will lift seasonal restrictions on drilling and other activities, it will also impose new geographical restrictions that will help protect several key sage grouse mating grounds for at least five years, said Chuck Otto, field manager for the BLM's Pinedale office.

In the first three years of development on the Anticline following the completion of the original 2000 Pinedale Anticline plan, the BLM received 155 requests for exceptions to seasonal sage grouse protections and granted them all, according to agency statistics.

From 2006 to 2007 the agency received 170 of the same such requests, and granted 117 of them.

Sage grouse males perform their famous strutting, puffing and popping displays for females on mating grounds, called leks, every spring, and biologists have known for years that the animals are extremely sensitive to noise and visual disturbances during this mating period.

Drilling rig noise, trucks and other human activities within a few miles of the leks can significantly reduce the rate and success of sage grouse reproduction. For this reason, the BLM instituted seasonal restrictions on gas field activities near sage grouse leks.

But the restrictions built into the 2000 plan were obviously inadequate, Molvar said, because sage grouse are disappearing from the area.

"In the Pinedale Anticline there have been a lot of studies on the birds that find that once oil and gas activities essentially surround the lek site, in three to five years that lek site, and the nesting population that uses it, is gone," he said. "Essentially what we're seeing is the sage grouse leks in the middle of oil and gas fields are vanishing at a very rapid rate."

In 2007, the number of sage grouse males within the Pinedale Anticline project area decreased by 30 percent compared to the previous three years, said Scott Smith, wildlife management coordinator for the Game and Fish Department in Pinedale.

"The seasonal restrictions are obviously not working. And granting exceptions weakens the protections to essentially nothing," Molvar said.

Bill Lanning, associate field manager for the BLM's Pinedale office, said the new development plan will call for more directional drilling, or drilling multiple wells from single pads. And it will suspend leases on the flanks of the field for a minimum of five years, while the core is being developed.

"We've got at least one key lek on the east flank that basically won't have any development around it for at least five years, at least two on the west flanks, and then in part of the south there are other leks, too, that will fall into that lease suspension," Lanning said.

The new plan will require that the core be adequately reclaimed for wildlife, including for sage grouse, before the flank leases will be available for development, Lanning said.

But Molvar said many of those sage grouse that are disappearing from the gas field are disappearing, also, from the overall sage grouse population permanently.

As a result of the drilling, the tens of thousands of truck trips annually throughout the field and the dust created by the activities there, the young grouse leave the prime habitat available in the field and move into other habitats that are often already supporting as many birds as possible, he said.

"It's a little bit like taking refuges from a typhoon in the West and shipping them to Ethiopia while they're in the midst of a famine," Molvar said.

Extended drought, development, agriculture and invasive weeds throughout the Midwest and West have combined to shrink the number of suitable living places for sage grouse, he said, and Wyoming is where the bird will "make its last stand."

"The very least the BLM could do would be to stick to seasonal restrictions, and what they really ought to be looking at is taking those prime habitats and placing them under permanent no-surface-occupancy restrictions," he said, and force the companies to get to the gas under the prime habitat by directional drilling.

"Without major corrective action, we're going to see an endangered species listing (for sage grouse), and so far we haven't seen the BLM willing to make that kind of corrective action," Molvar said.

Otto said there are probably many different ways to approach development on the Anticline and still maintain healthy sage grouse.

The BLM has developed its new plan, which will include year-round access to the field, in consultation with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Otto said.

"We relied on the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's expertise to help formulate the preferred alternative," he said. "Basically, we're taking the advice of professional wildlife biologists. I think in the wildlife community you'll find a diversity of opinions. This is the one option we decided was the best way to move forward, and we're hopeful it'll be successful."