Feds: Efforts to Block Sage Grouse Protection Could Backfire

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Feds: Efforts to Block Sage Grouse Protection Could Backfire

By SCOTT SONNER, ASSOCIATED PRESS RENO, Nev. — Oct 27, 2015, 4:03 PM ET

Attempts by rural Nevada counties, mining companies and others to block new U.S. policies intended to protect the greater sage grouse could backfire on the critics and ultimately force reconsideration of a recent decision to keep the bird off the list of endangered species, federal land managers warn.

Justice Department lawyers representing three U.S. agencies say it took an unprecedented effort by officials in 11 western states from California to the Dakotas to persuade the Fish and Wildlife Service last month to reverse its 2010 conclusion that protection of the grouse was warranted under the Endangered Species Act.

The new finding was based on assumptions that added protections in the land-planning amendments being challenged will be carried out to ensure the grouse no longer is threatened with extinction, they said in a brief filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Reno.

Any injunction blocking implementation would "diminish the protections for sage grouse ... undo four years of collaboration and could undermine FWS' finding," U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden wrote.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du has set a hearing for Nov. 12 in Reno to consider granting a preliminary injunction blocking the amendments.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/feds-efforts-block-sage-grouse-protection-backfire-34773252

[2naSalit]

1. Good.

Here's what those amendments have fomented in Idaho:

Soda Fire Recovery, the First Test of New Sage-grouse Amendments, Already a Failure.

BLM Plans to Turn Landscape into a Cattle Forage Zone.

The highly vaunted, but meaningless, land management plans to save sage grouse are being put to the test with the recovery plan for the Soda Fire which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August. Instead of focussing on reestablishing native vegetation, the recovery plan released last Friday calls for replanting 25% of the burned area with non-native Siberian wheatgrass, crested wheatgrass, alfalfa, and forage kochia. Ostensibly, these species are considered “desirable” non-native species but, once they are planted, they pretty much dominate the landscape for years into the future and increase the fire frequency over native grasses. The so-called “native” grasses that will be planted are cultivars that were selectively bred to be better livestock forage and don’t resemble their wild cousins.

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This isn’t a recovery plan designed to recover sage grouse habitat, it’s an expensive plan to quickly resume welfare ranching at a cost of $67.3 million. Rather than focussing on planting non-native livestock forage and quickly resuming grazing, the BLM should focus on reestablishing native vegetation and sagebrush for native wildlife.

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2015/10/14/soda-fire-recovery-the-first-test-of-new-sage-grouse-amendments-already-a-failure/

The never ending assault on wildlife and habitat for the sake of a dying industry that relies on public ignorance.