Greater Sage-Grouse at the center of western law suit

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "a chicken-size game bird - mottled brown, black and white - found on sagebrush plains and high desert from Colorado to California and into southern Canada" spurs another approach to protecting habitat:

A lawsuit recently filed in federal court accuses the Bureau of Land Management of violating two major environmental laws and its own regulations by allowing commercial activities to continue on those lands in California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.

But in a switch in strategy, the environmentalists aren't asking a judge to immediately halt those operations. They want to talk, and they think they may have a willing listener in the new Obama administration.

"What we are after is finding a way to do things differently than in the past and better manage these public lands into the future," said Laird Lucas, a lawyer for the Western Watersheds Project, which filed the suit.