Powell company halts plans to raise sage grouse

Posted 3/20/18

Diamond Wings Upland Game Birds informed Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials last week that the egg hunt is off for the 2018 season. Located a few miles west of Powell, it was the only company to apply and be certified to raise the grouse. …

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Powell company halts plans to raise sage grouse

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Wyoming’s controversial effort to breed the greater sage grouse in captivity has suffered a setback, as the only state-certified game bird farm has decided to take a pass on collecting eggs this spring.

Diamond Wings Upland Game Birds informed Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials last week that the egg hunt is off for the 2018 season. Located a few miles west of Powell, it was the only company to apply and be certified to raise the grouse. The decision puts in doubt private industry’s future attempts to rear the imperiled species.

Diemer True, owner of Diamond Wings, called off the project just days prior to a Thursday deadline for updates to his sage grouse rearing facility. The company’s decision was announced Thursday at a regular meeting of the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission in Cody.

“The ball was in their court on what they were going to do,” Scott Edberg, deputy chief of the Game and Fish’s wildlife division, told the commission. Edberg said he received a phone call and email from True on Monday, March 12, saying Diamond Wings “had decided not to move forward.”

The news surprised commissioners and interested parties on both sides of the conversation.

True cited a tight timeline between certification and the collection of 250 wild eggs as the main reason for passing on the breeding opportunity.

“It was a really tough decision to make,” he said from his Casper office on Friday. “The timeline involved made it difficult to do it in a cost effective way.”

He lobbied the Wyoming Legislature last year to pass the bill that allows private companies to attempt captive breeding.

After Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead approved Game and Fish regulations in November, Diamond Wings was the only company to apply for certification. The application was followed by a frenzy of meetings and inspections, ending with the game bird farm being certified on Jan. 15.

True said the legislation — which laid out a five-year window for captive breeding — took effect immediately, anticipating the collection of eggs last year.

“The rule-making process meant we lost the first year. If they would move up the deadlines — moving the certification deadline date to Oct. 1 — it would give us more time to work with people and do a game plan that’s not so hurried,” True said, adding, “To get our facility modified in time to gather eggs, everything would have to go perfectly. In my experience, nothing uncertain goes perfectly.”

True added that he isn’t ready to call it quits just yet — and said he hopes there would be flexibility in the certification process in 2019.

Karl Bear, manager of Diamond Wings and a Powell resident, said he was disappointed in the decision. Bear said he spent more than a year studying grouse captive breeding techniques in the U.S. and Canada.

The certification was issued specifically to Bear. True didn’t meet the regulations set up by the Game and Fish, but the department was willing to certify the breeding program through Bear, who has raised game birds for more than two decades.

Through the process the Game and Fish commission took heat from those on both sides of the debate, said commissioner Keith Culver.

“We’ve angered members of the Legislature that thought we were overly restrictive and we’ve angered a lot of groups that felt we weren’t restrictive enough,” Culver said. “I’m not sure there’s anybody we didn’t anger.”

Proponents were represented by those in the mineral extraction and ranching industries who hoped farm-raised grouse would help to mitigate exploration in sage grouse habitat and keep the species from being listed on the Endangered Species Act. They were emboldened in their efforts when Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke listed captive breeding as an alternative to habitat management.

True companies are involved in oil and gas exploration and development (True Oil Company); marketing (Eighty-Eight Oil Company); transportation (Belle Fourche Pipeline and Black Hills Trucking); oil field and tubular sales (Toolpushers Supply Co.); and oil and gas drilling (True Drilling LLC); as well as agriculture (True Ranches) and financial services (Hilltop National Bank). He is also the former chairman of Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).

Opponents cited concerns about the privatization of the state’s wildlife and the possibility of spreading disease to wild populations from farm-raised grouse.

Dwayne Meadows, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, said he’s happy about the delay hoping the added time to consider sage grouse farming will work through major issues of concern.

“Disease transmission is the biggest issue,” Meadows said.

He’s also adamant that money raised from license fees shouldn’t be spent on the program.

“True is very well respected, but I don’t think Diamond Wings is doing this for charitable reasons,” Meadows said.

The state’s accounting of resources spent on the effort, Edberg said, included 442 hours of labor and over 2,900 miles on the road for a total cost of about $23,500. The costs may go up in the final accounting. Diamond Wings had spent much more in their pursuit of certification, but was unwilling to spend hundreds of thousands to meet requirements to continue.

Diamond Wings was required to hire a wildlife consultation team to help with radio telemetry used in egg collection; the lowest bid came in at just more than $125,000, True said. The Powell facility also needed updates, including a new flight pen and nursery, to meet a regulation to keep sage grouse rearing at least 100-yards from other game bird facilities. Construction costs, he said, could easily top $200,000.

Tom Christiansen, the state’s leading sage grouse expert, said there is still time to accomplish captive breeding, based on recent success at the Calgary Zoo and limited captive breeding research done in Colorado. Three years remain on the Legislature’s five-year window if a bird farm is certified in 2019. But Christiansen doubts there is time to go further with the experiment with the ultimate goal of augmenting wild populations.

“There is no template for success in augmenting wild populations of grouse,” he said.

If Diamond Wings doesn’t apply for certification next year, True hopes other companies will.

“We don’t have the corner on the market for the knowledge,” True said. “Our goal was to try to preserve the species and avoid a listing on the Endangered Species Act. We had tremendous response and were very encouraged. But we’re going to wait to see if they will change the certification deadline.”

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