Claiming the federal government failed to consider the impact of drilling on a threatened bird’s habitat, three environmental groups and San Miguel County sued the Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday seeking to cancel a number of oil and gas leases sold earlier this year in southwest Colorado.

“The Gunnison sage-grouse deserves strong conservation protections, not just to ensure the future of the species, but also to ensure that the years of collaborative conservation efforts led by local counties and the state of Colorado isn’t needlessly thrown away,” said Luke Schafer, West Slope director for Conservation Colorado, one of the groups initiating the lawsuit. “We need the Trump administration to act to complement that hard work, not more rhetoric about ‘energy dominance’ or ill-advised lease sales that threaten to undercut years of stakeholder investment.”

The other groups joining in the lawsuit were Rocky Mountain Wild and the San Juan Citizens Alliance.

The BLM sold leases on nine parcels in March following months of protests and public comments from the county and the groups arguing that the public lands weren’t suited to oil and gas production because of environmental conditions, including the possibility drilling activity could lead to the protected sage-grouse’s extinction. “[B]ut the BLM never responded to these concerns and leased the parcels without conducting any of the required environmental analyses for any parcel,” the groups said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

“Oil and gas drilling will result in heavy truck traffic that will displace Gunnison sage grouse from some of their last and most important remaining breeding and nesting grounds in San Miguel Basin,” said Megan Mueller, senior conservation biologist with Rocky Mountain Wild. “Half of the remaining habitat for Gunnison sage-grouse is on public land managed by BLM, and their continued failure to do their share to protect critical habitat undermines the local collaborative effort to conserve this unique Colorado bird.”

The Gunnison sage grouse was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 2014, largely due to loss of habitat.

San Miguel County Commissioner Hilary Cooper said the county had a duty to try to block the leases.

“As elected officials, we seek to partner with land management agencies to keep this species off the endangered list. In this case we felt that we had no choice but to challenge the BLM’s leases, which could harm the species and impact its habitat,” she said.