A chicken-sized game bird native to western sagebrush has become the subject of the biggest conservation project in U.S. history.

The effort to keep the greater sage grouse off the endangered species list stretches across 11 states from North Dakota to California, and has become a complex balancing act between saving critical ecosystems and protecting the region’s key industries.

Biologists list energy development as one of the primary threats to the sage grouse and as our Inside Energy Reporter Dan Boyce tells us, the biggest threat arguably comes from a source thought of as one of the greenest.