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considered for surface facility use over a 10 -year period. The WRFO routinely relocates surface <br />disturbance to avoid, where practical, the involvement of prairie dog burrow systems and <br />development of proposed surface facilities would generally pose no risk of individual mortality <br />or represent a substantive reduction in availability of functional habitat. It is also unlikely that <br />shallow leveling activities or brief cross - country vehicle use by light trucks and, infrequently, <br />truck - mounted drilling rigs and water trucks on occupied valley terraces would have any <br />meaningful consequence on the integrity of underground burrow systems (Menkens and <br />Anderson 1985). Too, the practical influence of subsidence on burrow system integrity must be <br />considered localized and temporary, since there has been no substantive change in prairie dog <br />distribution overlying mine panels in Red Wash for at least 20 years. <br />In the absence of timing considerations, brief (less than 1 week), single -point construction and <br />drilling activities would have only localized potential to disrupt reproductive activities sufficient <br />to influence survival or recruitment, much less generalized surface use for foraging. However, <br />due to the elevated status of white - tailed prairie dogs as BLM- sensitive species (comparable to <br />candidates for ESA listing), conditions of approval involving avoidance and activity deferrals <br />(up to 200 - meters and 60 -days) would be applied to avoid, as much as practical, compromising <br />the integrity of active burrow systems and reproductive activities that involve gestation and <br />dependent young (i.e., April -May). <br />Black- Footed Ferret <br />At the present time and for the foreseeable future, there is no reasonable likelihood that ferrets <br />north of Coal Ridge would be attracted to or remain associated with these prairie dog towns and <br />virtually no chance that reproduction could be supported. Consistent with the management <br />criteria and philosophies expressed in the 1998 Final Rule for the establishment of this Non- <br />essential Experimental black- footed ferret population (Federal RegisterNolume 63, No. 190: <br />52824 - 52841) and Colorado Revised Statute 33- 2- 105.6, the cooperatively developed 2001 Wolf <br />Creek ferret management plan directs that, outside the ferret management areas, operators would <br />generally be encouraged to conduct newly authorized operations in a manner that reduces the <br />risk of adversely affecting ferrets that may inhabit the area (e.g., minimal timing limitations or <br />facility moves to minimize involvement of prairie dog burrow systems and avoid sensitive <br />reproductive timeframes). <br />Greater Sage- Grouse <br />Short term disturbance to approximately 56 acres of sage - grouse general habitat in diminutive, <br />widely dispersed sites is not expected to alter the suitability or utility of sage - grouse habitat in <br />lower Red Wash over the life of the project and would have no residual influence on sage - grouse <br />habitat character once these facility sites are reclaimed. <br />Cumulative Effects: Leasing and development of the Red Wash Tract would contribute <br />incrementally to those surface uses that occupy and adversely modify habitat suited for prairie <br />dogs and their associates (ferret, burrowing owl, ferruginous hawk), deplete water from the <br />Upper Colorado River system (BLM- sensitive and listed fishes of the White River), and reduce <br />lower- elevation scrub -shrub habitat suited for use by Brewer's sparrow and, ostensibly in the <br />future, greater sage - grouse. However, the contribution of lease tract development in the context <br />of other land uses and processes that are currently prevalent in northwest Colorado and northeast <br />DOI- BLM -CO- 110- 2012- 0023 -EA 49 <br />