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    Biden Administration Restricts Development in West to Protect Sage Grouse

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    Limits on building energy projects on at least 34.5 million acres could strongly protect the iconic Western bird. But the incoming Trump administration may reverse the rule.The Biden administration on Friday issued final regulations designed to protect the greater sage grouse, a speckled brown bird with a sprawling habitat across 10 Western states.The move to safeguard the iconic species would limit drilling and mining on federal lands as well as the development of clean energy such as solar and wind power.But the plan could soon be upended: President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to increase oil and gas development on public lands, and he sought to weaken sage grouse habitat restrictions in his first term.The conservation effort is part of a long tug of war between environmentalists and the drilling and mining industries over wildlife habitat across the Western states. The habitat of the grouse has shrunk in recent years due to mining and other industrial activity, along with wildfire and drought linked to climate change. Once abundant, the greater sage grouse, a bulbous bird with a fan of tail feathers that nests on the ground, is teetering toward endangered status.The sage grouse population has declined about 80 percent since 1965, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.“For too long, a false choice has been presented for land management that aims to pit development against conservation,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “This administration’s collaborative work has demonstrated that we can do both successfully.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      SpaceX’s Assault on a Fragile Habitat: Four Takeaways From Our Investigation

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      The development of Elon Musk’s facility in South Texas did not play out as local officials were originally told it would.When Elon Musk first eyed South Texas for a new base of space operations, he promised that SpaceX would have a small, eco-friendly footprint and that the surrounding area would be “left untouched.”A decade later, the reality is far different. An investigation by The New York Times shows how SpaceX’s ferocious growth in the area has dramatically changed the fragile landscape and has threatened the habitat that the U.S. government is charged with protecting there.More repercussions are likely coming, in South Texas and in other places where SpaceX is expanding. Mr. Musk has said he hopes to one day launch his Starships — the largest rocket ever manufactured — a thousand times a year.Executives from SpaceX declined repeated requests to comment. But Gary Henry, who until this year served as a SpaceX adviser on Pentagon launch programs, said the company was aware of concerns about SpaceX’s environmental impact and was committed to addressing them.Here are four takeaways from our investigation:Musk used preserved lands as a buffer for SpaceX operationsRocket launch sites in the U.S., such as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, typically are enormous, secure facilities with tens of thousands of acres within their confines.Mr. Musk didn’t intend to buy up anything like that amount of land when he was looking at the area near Brownsville, Texas. Instead, he wanted to buy a tiny piece of property in the middle of public lands — what the team involved referred to as a “doughnut hole.” He figured the surrounding state parks and federal wildlife preserves would serve as natural buffers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More