U.S. military can withstand the sage grouse, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts to protect the greater sage grouse, a bird found in the western United States, do not pose a threat to the U.S. military, two senior Democratic House of Representatives lawmakers said on Tuesday. Debate over the bird was intense a year ago when the House Armed Services Committee was finalizing its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the $600 billion annual bill setting out U.S. defense policy. Arguing that protecting the sage grouse would put large swaths of the western United States off limits for military training, House Republicans included a ban on making the bird an endangered species in the House version of the 2016 NDAA. The measure was stripped out as the bill was considered by the Senate and not in the legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama. But it is again in the House version of the 2017 NDAA, which the House armed services panel will debate on Wednesday. Representatives Adam Smith, the top Armed Services Democrat, and Raul Grijalva, his counterpart on the Natural Resources Committee, released letters from Department of Defense officials saying that land use plans intended to protect the bird will not affect military training, operations or readiness to any significant degree. "These letters put to bed once and for all the silly speculation that a few birds could hamstring the greatest fighting force in the history of the world," Grijalva said in a statement. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)