Ed Kulesa has made sure that the 101-acre farm on which he’s lived for 50 years will never be developed. He’s had offers from people who wanted to build a housing development and put in a gravel pit.
The threatened Gunnison sage grouse used to thrive on the sage brush plains in Dolores County. But as farms, roads, and subdivisions encroached on critical habitat, their numbers diminished, triggering action by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last year.