Cambridge, Idaho » Farmers and ranchers in southwestern Idaho are considering a series of new conservation measures aimed at improving sage grouse habitat and avoiding future conflicts if the bird is declared an endangered species.

Crop and livestock producers have developed a proposal with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game that would institute the new conservation practices across 500,000 acres near towns like Weiser, Midvale and Cambridge.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to decide in February if the chicken-sized bird, whose numbers and sagebrush habitat have diminished significantly in recent decades, should be added to the federal Endangered Species List. The bird is found in southern Idaho and 10 other Western states. including Utah.

Producers who take part in the deal with the state could enhance sage grouse habitat by changing the way they cut hay fields or delay livestock grazing in known nesting areas until the birds raise their chicks.

"A lot of these things I already do," rancher Royce Schwenkfelder told the Idaho Statesman. Schwenkfelder and his brother Bob are working with the state to help protect the bird on about 6,000 acres of pasture, cropland and sagebrush in Washington County.

In exchange for voluntary conservation efforts, ranchers and farmers would not face new regulations on their private land if the sage grouse is listed.

"They need to reduce or eliminate the threats they have on their property," said Kendra Womack, the Fish and Wildlife biologist who is overseeing the agreement that has gone out for public comment.

It wouldn't prevent ranchers who graze on federal land from new restrictions on grazing tracts managed by the Bureau of Land Management. But 66 percent of the area identified in the state agreement is private.

The agreement is voluntary -- ranchers could withdraw at any time -- and would last for 30 years.

An even bigger threat to the bird and its habitat in this part of the state is development, said Gene Gray, a biologist with Idaho Fish and Game.

Washington County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, and a map Gray developed of new wells shows that smaller private residences are encroaching on sage grouse habitat at an alarming rate.

The threat posed by development is similar in other western states. Government scientists say as many as 16 million sage grouse lived from Kansas to California in the early 1800s. But urban sprawl, farming, ranching, oil and gas drilling, wildfires and the spread of invasive weeds have dwindled sagebrush habitat, and the bird's numbers.

For some environmentalists, federal protection is the only solution to restoring the bird's population, and state agreements like the one now being pursued by Idaho are "piecemeal" approaches are doomed to fail.

"Ultimately, sage grouse are so imperiled that only listing will provide the protections that they need," said Brian Ertz, spokesman for the Western Watersheds Project, which has sued the federal government over sage grouse policy.