CHEYENNE - A panel formed to look into how to preserve and improve sage grouse numbers and habitat in Wyoming began fashioning a list of recommendations during its first meeting Tuesday.

The Sage Grouse Implementation Team compiled more than 30 possible recommendations it will discuss and refine over the next eight weeks. They include improved grazing practices, mapping out sage grouse habitat, different drilling practices and improved reclamation.

"I think what we got here is a skeleton, maybe a few tendons and ligaments, and we need to get some muscle on it and that's where we'll be headed," said team Chairman Bob Budd, who is executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust.

Declining sage grouse numbers throughout the West have conservation groups calling for special federal protection to help the bird's populations recover. Wyoming and other Western states worry that such protection might hamper energy development and livestock grazing.

The Wyoming group consists of representatives of federal and state agencies, conservation groups, energy industry and landowners. Appointed by the governor, its plans four more meetings before sending its recommendations to Gov. Dave Freudenthal at the end of September.

"This group is charged by the governor to try and aggregate some of the practices and some of the things that need to be done right now and develop an implementation strategy for that," Budd said.

The panel heard presentations from energy industry representatives, biologists and researchers about the sage grouse and the challenges the bird faces.

Budd said he's not sure what other states are doing to address the sage grouse issue, but whatever Wyoming comes up with can be shared with other states.

"We hope that we can lead by example, we hope we can learn from them," he said. "Our jurisdiction is what we can actually have some influence and control over, and that's our own state."

He hopes to consolidate and improve the list before presenting the list of recommendations to Freudenthal.

"The devil is in the details," Budd said. "I mean the mapping, we know that we need to do that, but when you get a little deeper into it, it was what level of resolution, who was going to do it, who's going to warehouse it. Those kind of things. And I hope to get to recommendations that are that specific."

Cost of any recommendations isn't a concern right now, he said.

"At some point reality tells you that you will, but at this point, it's ideas, it's what is the best that we know that's out there that can be done and then we need to develop that price tag," he said.