By Michelle Rindels |December 5, 2015
RENO — The U.S. Interior Department has agreed to defer to new, higher quality maps of sage grouse habitat in Nevada that correct glaring inaccuracies in earlier federal maps that showed the birds living near urban areas in Reno and Sparks and threatened development on the drawing board for years, Gov. Brian Sandoval said Friday.
Sandoval said after meeting with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell for more than an hour in Las Vegas that they have resolved a number of Nevada’s concerns about new land management rules protecting the bird, including the potential impacts on plans to build a middle school in Sun Valley north of Reno and develop a veterans’ cemetery in Sparks.