Across the West, Greater Sage-Grouse numbers are plummeting. So says an August 19 court filing that describes three consecutive years of sharp declines in five states that hold more than 80 percent of the population. Sage-grouse numbers are known to swing widely, but the losses are too big to be explained by those roughly decade-long boom-and-bust cycles, according to the sworn statement by Clait Braun, a retired biologist who studied the birds for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Braun’s testimony is part of an ongoing lawsuit by four conservation groups that aims to block sweeping changes announced earlier this year to sage-grouse conservation plans on millions of acres overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The population figures arrived on the heels of a U.S. Forest Service overhaul of its own sage-grouse plans that conservation groups see as similarly worrisome, and just days after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced rule changes that...