ESA

Why The State Approach Could Work Better for Sage Grouse

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This is an oil and gas task force meeting with Governor Hickenlooper. Another state policy experiment with people talking to each other.
This is an oil and gas task force meeting with Governor Hickenlooper. Another Colorado policy experiment, with people who disagree talking to each other.

Today there were a couple of articles on the sage grouse and Gardner’s bill that I think are worthy of interest. There is one in the Denver Post (may they live long and prosper!) here. Also a couple in E&E News here (I think you need a subscription for this one) and here .

So national groups tell us that ecosystems will unravel or at least grouse will die out, if states are allowed to pursue their own way (even for six years). I guess they think that states can’t be trusted with environmental policy. Of course, the Clean Air Act is an example of state responsibility with federal oversight and that seems to work. Do we have a reason to believe that states are “good on air and bad on critters?”. One of the reasons I’m not afraid is that I spent about six years working on the Colorado Roadless Rule. My experiences with the Colorado Roadless Rule involved all kinds of permutations (state-led and federal-led processes; different administration (3 state and 2 federal)) and so on.

It’s a well known fact that states are incubators for policy experiments. People have ideas and can carry them out without invoking The Big Players, and Partisanizing Everything. What happens in D.C. is that a simple policy idea quickly turns into something one party tries to bash the other party with. I don’t know why it didn’t happen in Colorado. It could be because we’re purple, or because Things Have To Get Done in a state.

Here are a couple of thoughts about why states can do things better. People who work for states know, and have databases with, a great deal of information that the feds do not. For example, when it was desired to restrict roads in roadless areas for undeveloped water rights, the state had the information on water rights. These kinds of issues could be accommodated in a state-specific rulemaking but would tend to get washed out at the national level. For one thing, water law is different in different states.

When our team met with representatives of national environmental groups it seemed like it was all about abstractions, and generalities and posturing and perhaps grandstanding. They would use words like PROTECTION and INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT and so on and weren’t really engaging at the scale of on the ground problems and issues. One national group said we had to “give them something” for them to support the rule. State and local environmental groups tended to want more specific changes.

As I recall, some wildlife people on the western slope wanted to cut down some trees or large brush for better habitat for some critter (a critter that wasn’t endangered) and their concerns were too small to be heard, because the goal was “words that please national groups.” Another example is that some people kept claiming “the science says” that you don’t need to cut down trees around communities (sound familiar?) and Mike King, State DNR Director, organized a meeting with elected officials from communities, fire people, and all the other interests in which each “side” selected three scientists to talk about fuel treatments. When I think about that meeting, I think 1) state people know the biophysical side of the issue and they know the people such that 2) people need to be more or less accountable for what they say. People are used to “gettin’ er’ done” in terms of policy. Grandstanding is not much tolerated in that kind of group. I think that the level of discourse at that meeting, was much higher than my experiences in D.C., where one side at a time tends to come in, and the Feds just listen and not question or disagree. Obviously I believe open discussions of scientific and other points of view should be valued and be a part of any public process.

So that is my experience. Better discourse, more knowledge, more transparency, and ultimately a better policy outcome.

Dave Freudenthal, the (Democrat) former Governor of Wyoming, made a similar point in a letter to Secretary Salazar in 2010 about oil and gas regulation:

In terms of development, I have always been a strong proponent of balance. In general, given the right information and proper motivation, we have usually found our way to a development array that meets the terms of those that understand the need for both production and protection. Frankly, we know that there will never be a meeting of the minds of those in the “drill here, drill now” crowd and the “not one blade of grass” crowd, mainly because neither side is willing to give toward the middle. Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process. Meanwhile in places like Cheyenne, Casper, Wamsutter and Cody, Wyoming, we in the middle simply want a good job, clean air, healthy watersheds and a place to hunt, fish and hike with our families.

As Governor Freudenthal said, who should be making decisions “in the middle”? A random mix of ideologues or the people who have to live there in open discussion with each other?

In my experience on the Colorado Roadless Rule, I saw better policy work actually being done when states and feds had to work together, as well as people with different perspectives, including political ones. I think the sage grouse and the people in Colorado deserve that quality of work.

Feds and States spar over Sage Grouse- 165 Million Acres

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main_the_bird

Here’s the article.

It’s kind of interesting to compare these efforts with the spotted owl in the Northwest. One contrast is that the policy context for energy development is different from that for timber. We get timber from our friendly neighbor to the north when we don’t produce it ourselves- energy.. not so much. No one argues that there is not a market for energy, and that it employs people as does ranching and home development. It just seems to me that all economic activities have some environmental effects (my example is growing marijuana). But groups with certain policy agendas use ESA as a tool to move offshore certain activities in certain places and not others. It seems that these activities mostly deal with resource use in rural (undeveloped) areas. As a humble retiree and policy wonk, and not a constitutional scholar, what I don’t like about this is whenever we argue that “we need to override the wishes of local people as expressed through their elected officials” it needs to be compelling, have social and economic justice in mind and treat locals and states as respected partners.

Here are a couple of quotes:

But grouse have dwindled rapidly since 1985 to an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 — victims of agricultural, housing and industrial development. That decline triggers, under the Endangered Species Act, a federal rescue to avert extinction on the 165 million acres where grouse have survived.

Speaking of Colorado and Wyoming, where I used to drive around for work, I didn’t see “new” agricultural development around where I go since 1985.. most of the intermountai west seems to have agriculture only if watered, and water rights go way back. Maybe someone can help with that. Seems like folks have been grazing for a long time. Housing development also seems spottily distributed throughout the area.

The oil and gas industry and private landowners, who control 56 percent of the 4.1-million acres of the greater grouse habitat in Colorado, prefer state-led protection, if any. Oil and gas companies hold rights to drill on much of the Colorado habitat.

Such is the fear and uncertainty around possible federal action that some northwestern Colorado ranchers are rushing to kill sagebrush using herbicides — trying to avoid anticipated restrictions. A rigid crackdown “is everybody’s fear,” said Craig-area rancher Wes McStay, a longtime leader of voluntary sagebrush conservation, who called the destruction by others counterproductive.

On a recent morning amid the herbaceous scent of sage, 154 grouse strutted around a field on McStay’s land, which contains the largest concentration of the estimated 20,000 grouse in Colorado.

That’s the result of shielding “lek” breeding areas, reducing cattle grazing on sagebrush and rotating crops to help grouse. McStay has invited Colorado State University researchers to work with him. He uses a plow to thin mature sagebrush and spur growth. He recently teamed with state biologists to put tracking collars on two birds.

He’s also talking with the Nature Conservancy about an easement that could pay him to give up development rights.

“What’s a federal listing going to solve? All we really want is good management, and a listing is not going to make that happen,” McStay said.

“I’m kind of an environmentalist at heart. I lean that way. But people here have got to be able to make a living on the land.”

Or not?

“We know things are going in the wrong direction. The sage grouse, the sagebrush system, is in trouble. And it is not just sage grouse,” Fish and Wildlife director Walsh said. “What is also at stake is habitat for the mule deer, pronghorn and elk — very important to sportsmen and actually quite an economic driver for the states.

It seems to me that mulies and elk are at least mildly compatible with development- as I see them in the hood where I live regularly. But I think people (especially federal officials) should be clear on whether it’s really about the sage grouse.. or really about something else.

Here’s another article about this..

Travis Bruner, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, struck a similar tone and questioned whether the program has led to “further subsidization of the livestock industry.”

“Sage grouse habitat on public lands should be given more priority,” he said.

An estimated 31 percent of sage grouse habitat is on private land, and Weller said enlisting landowners was critical. “At the end of the day, you could invest significant money in public lands and never move the needle,” he said.

Spotted Owls and the NW Forest Plan- Do We Have a Formal Lessons Learned?

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Bird is still declining.. have we learned anything?
Bird is still declining.. have we learned anything?

I ran across this from Bob Berwyn the other day..below is an excerpt. Here are a couple of thoughts from me.

First, according to DellaSalla (not really an objective person, but…) “proposed logging on the Klamath National Forest across 40,000 acres could adversely impact 70 spotted owl activity centers.” Yet info I have from people working in the woods in Oregon suggests that there are many, many protections in pace for actual activity centers. So how would that actually work? Are the protections not thought to be effective in some specific way by DellaSalla?

Second, in my opinion, because a species is outcompeted does not mean that the “older forests” are in danger.. they are just one species. You could argue that the American Chestnut was certainly more of a “flagship species” and more important to a variety of species, and the Appalachian forests are still going strong.. they are just different.

Third, if we follow “habitat loss” as being always a problem, regardless of the importance of other factors, then should Oregon put a moratorium on any housebuilding or other forms of loss? Or is it only timber sales? (this reminds me a bit of Indiana bat). My concern is just about the logic and utility of, if something difficult to stop is the problem (say a disease, or a competitor), stopping everything else just because you can stop the other things. It seems to me like the policy equivalent of the “streetlight effect.”

Fourth, and relating to the title of this post, it seems to me that the NW Forest Plan was a great experiment (by “great” I mean with extremely significant impacts over broad acreages, not necessarily successful in terms of meeting any specific stated objectives) and if the fire folks can do “lessons learned” on fires that clearly impact folks and ecosystems less than the NW Forest Plan, shouldn’t someone do it on this effort?

We could get public involvement on the questions to ask. Some that have occurred to me are: could we have predicted the barred owl? Why did we think habitat management would take care of the owl when clearly it hasn’t?
Was the degree of monitoring necessary? Could it have been done at lower cost?

How much are the Feds and State (all branches) spending on: monitoring, studying, shooting barred owls? Could these efforts be better coordinated across agencies and the level of info improved? What info do we really need today, given all that we have learned?

Could the Plan in general have met more of the objectives at a lower social and economic cost? Could it have been more successful biologically?

When the President was there, it seemed like there was political compromise and interaction with the public and elected officials. How did that interact with the history since and the use of ESA as a policy instrument?

What about the whole interagency management group? How much money did that cost? If coordinating among agencies was successful there, is it a model that should be replicated?

Maybe all of this is known, and of course, I haven’t been watching it very closely as I haven’t been working in the NW for a while. But it seems like something that deserves some serious formal attention.

According to the USFWS, the two main threats to the survival of the northern spotted owl are habitat loss and competition from barred owls. Barred owls have spread westward, encroaching on spotted owl territories and out-competing them.

Conservation advocates said the USFWS must acknowledge the role of habitat loss as a key factor in the continued decline of the species.

“The spotted owl is a flagship species that symbolizes the plight of older forests in the Pacific Northwest,” said Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist with the Geos Institute. “The owl and older forests share a common plight, each hanging on to what little remains under the auspices of the Northwest Forest Plan,” said DellaSala, who was on the US Fish & Wildlife Service recovery team for the owl from 2006-2008.

The old-growth forests of the region, stretching from California’s redwoods to the Olympic Peninsula’s majestic spruce-hemlock forests, are critical for other imperiled species, including the marbled murrelet, Pacific fisher, red-tree vole (southern Oregon coast), as well as Pacific salmon runs. Today only about 20 percent of these ancient forests remain, primarily on federal lands.

“Tthe best way to save the spotted owl and hundreds of species that depend on similar old forest habitat is to protect more habitat from logging so spotted owls can eventually co-exist with invading barred owls.”

The Northwest Forest Plan has helped reduce habitat loss on federal lands since 1994, but the threat from barred owls has intensified. Preliminary results from an experiment testing the effects of removing barred owls from select areas of northern spotted owl habitat show promise in benefitting northern spotted owls and will help inform this review.

“The best tools we have to prevent spotted owls from going extinct are continued habitat protection and barred owl management, both of which are recommended in the recovery plan,” said Paul Henson, Oregon supervisor for the USFWS.

“On a positive note, the experimental removal of barred owls is showing real promise, with early reports indicating that spotted owl populations rebound when barred owl populations are reduced. Our review of the spotted owl will tell us whether current efforts to address threats are sufficient.”

According to DellaSala, federal agencies may actually be hindering the recovery of the spotted owl by permitting more logging activities in the region.

For example, proposed logging on the Klamath National Forest across 40,000 acres could adversely impact 70 spotted owl activity centers.

Flathead forest plan revision NOI

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The Notice of Intent to initiate scoping for the Flathead revision EIS has been published and comments are due by May 5.  Here is a newspaper article.  Here is the website.  Here is my summary of the summary of the changes needed from the current plan:

  • 2012 Planning Rule requirements. Eight specific categories of requirements are described.
  • Grizzly bear habitat management. Relevant portions of a new interagency draft grizzly bear conservation strategy will be incorporated to provide regulatory mechanisms that could support de-listing. It would generally follow the model from the existing plan (given its apparent success at promoting recovery), and would add some plan components for a larger area, including connectivity zones.
  • Bull trout and native fish habitat. It would replace the Inland Native Fish Strategy with ‘equivalent’ direction, but would not include numeric riparian management objectives or a requirement for watershed analysis prior to projects.
  • Canada lynx habitat management. It would replace the current Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction with a modified version. Changes would include additional exceptions to allow precommercial thinning.   Mapped lynx habitat has also been updated.
  • Inventoried roadless areas. In accordance with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, they will be removed from lands suitable for timber production. Other decisions to be made in these areas involve recreation opportunities and travel management.
  • Old growth forests. Current plan requirements to retain existing old growth would be included in the revised plan, but changes would be made in how to provide snags and down woody material in the long term, and to address landscape pattern.
  • Winter motorized recreation. There would be no net increase in designated over-snow routes or play areas, but boundaries would change and offsetting additions and reductions would be made to two areas.

(Timber harvest is apparently not included as a ‘change’ because the volume objectives are comparable to recent volumes sold.)

There are some unusual things going on with the wildlife direction in the proposed plan.  First, the Forest Service has recognized that including a consistent and scientifically defensible conservation strategy for grizzly bears in its forest plans throughout the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem is its best hope of providing adequate regulatory mechanisms that will allow the species to be delisted.  That is the same philosophy that was behind the Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction, and to some extent the Inland Native Fish Strategy.  And yet with changes in the Flathead plan, the Forest Service may be starting to disassemble those consistent and scientifically defensible strategies piece by piece.  That would be in line with expectations of the Fish and Wildlife Service IF the forest-specific changes are needed to achieve the original purpose of the strategy, but addressing forest-specific conditions (using best available scientific information).  It would probably be out of line, and not supportive of recovery,  if it simply represents disagreement with the original direction (which was imposed by a higher authority).

It will be interesting to see how the Forest Service manages this process at a broader scale, and whether it is setting a  precedent for disassembling the Northwest Forest Plan and other broad-scale conservation strategies through plan revisions.

Suing the federal government over sage grouse: Denver Post Editorial Board

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Here’s a link.

Editorials
Suing the federal government over sage grouse
By The Denver Post Editorial Board

When U.S. Fish & Wildlife director Daniel Ashe was in The Denver Post’s offices in November, he was exceedingly confident about his agency’s chances of prevailing if the state sued over its decision to list the Gunnison sage grouse as threatened.

And perhaps his confidence is well-placed. The federal government is sued all the time over wildlife decisions by every variety of interest group, and usually wins.

But not always — which is why it was good to see Colorado and Gunnison County each file a notice of intent to sue Fish & Wildlife in recent weeks over its unnecessary move to list the sage grouse.

The notices must be accompanied by explanations of the grounds for the pending lawsuits, and these too were encouraging. The state and county are not just quibbling over the odd procedural misstep by the federal government. They’re disputing the scientific judgments the agency used as the foundation for its decision.

“In making the listing decision, FWS improperly analyzed the required factors to make its determination that the Gunnison sage-grouse is threatened; failed to rely on the best available science; and failed to give adequate weight to the extensive conservation efforts undertaken by state and local governments and private landowners,” the state’s notice said.

Gunnison County similarly declared that Fish & Wildlife is flatly wrong about the sage grouse being threatened. The population of the Gunnison Basin, where 86 percent of the species live, is growing, the county points out, and the Rangeland Conservation Plan “estimates that the likelihood of the species becoming extinct in the next 50 years is less than 0.5 percent.”

The most interesting parts of the county’s brief, however, have to do with the extensive measures officials have taken over the years to protect the species, not only in the main basin but increasingly in the counties that have “satellite” populations of the bird, too.

The county maintains that a federal representative attended 69 meetings of the Gunnison Basin Sage-grouse Strategic Committee from September 2006 through December 2012 and yet never indicated those efforts “were inappropriate, insufficient or otherwise unacceptable.”

To the contrary, “Director Ashe commented at a public meeting at Western State Colorado University that the conservation efforts are ‘inspirational.’ ”

Inspirational, huh?

It will be interesting to see what a federal judge makes of all this.

Congress Weighs In On the Sage Grouse

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checksandbalancesunclesam

From where I sit, different folks have different thoughts about how the idea of protecting endangered species should work in real life. Congress passed ESA in 1973, that is, a year before I started my 40 year career in forestry. Since then we’ve had the build up of a confusing set of regulations and bureaucracy with a tendency toward a lack of openness and transparency in the use of scientific information.

I would think it would be legitimate for Congress to weigh in on these additions.. but maybe not.

Here’s a link to an article in the Denver Post this AM. Dear me.. I see a legitimate use of “checks and balances”in the “.. others see only “confusion.” Oh, well. My headline would have been.. “elected officials strike back on management by NGO’s and courts (unelected).”

A federal budget bill has added more confusion to sage grouse fight
By Mark K. Matthews
The Denver Post

WASHINGTON — All it took was one sentence in a bill 1,603 pages long.

But those 87 words were enough to sow more confusion in a years-long fight over the Gunnison sage-grouse and the greater sage-grouse — two rare birds in Colorado and the West.

The trigger for the chaos, and a new round of hostility between environmentalists and landowners, is a massive spending bill passed by Congress this month and signed into law last week by President Barack Obama.

The novel-length legislation funds the federal government through next fall, but also includes a raft of favors for special interests, including one provision that allows individuals to donate more money to partisan political conventions.

Among the so-called “riders” attached to the bill was a one-sentence provision that prohibits the Department of the Interior from changing how it classifies the rarity of the sage-grouse.

More to the point, it prevents the Interior from taking any new steps to list the Gunnison sage-grouse or the greater sage-grouse as “threatened” or “endangered” — two designations that come with a laundry list of restrictions that would affect homebuilders and energy companies.

Though the rider sounds straightforward, activists and some policymakers said the move only adds another layer of uncertainty to a battle that has ping-ponged for years between Denver and Washington, as well as inside the court system.

“It does throw the whole West in limbo,” said Erik Molvar of the environmental group WildEarth Guardians.

and

Fish and Wildlife will continue to collect data and conduct analysis as it relates to listing” the greater sage-grouse, said Jessica Kershaw, an Interior spokeswoman.

The stance has earned the applause of environmentalists, even if the future remains uncertain.

“It’s an act of congressional arrogance, substituting its wildlife expertise for the expertise of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which actually has trained professionals,” said Molvar.

With both sides sticking to their guns, a future listing for the greater sage-grouse could depend on whether Congress votes next year to continue its prohibition.

Given the Interior’s commitment to study the bird, there remains the opportunity for the administration to quickly issue a listing if the legislation expires — even if that window is short.

Wow.. Congress passing laws Molvar doesn’t like is “arrogant”, because they are those darned elected officials and not wildlife biologists. I wonder how many wildlife biologists were in Congress when they passed ESA ;)?

Rim Fire Update

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Apparently, enough of the hazard trees within the Rim Fire on the Stanislaus NF have been cut so that the travel ban has finally been lifted, after more than a year. I heard one report that says that the litigation has failed at the District Court level, losing their pleas to stop the logging three times. The article below includes the Appeals Court but, I doubt that an appeal has been seen in court yet. It seems too soon after the District Court decision for the appeal to be decided.

http://www.calforests.org/rim-fire-update-final-motion-halt-restoration-forestry-rim-fire-denied/

P9232907-web

 

Since the Rim Fire tore through the area and devoured over 250, 000 square miles of National, State and private forested land, the community has come together to put together a solution with positive environmental, economical and social sense. The whole effort to restore forests has been very successful due to cooperation of a diverse group of individuals, organizations and government agencies.

(Edit: Thanks to Matt for pointing out the acres/square miles error. That should be 250,000 acres.)

With a monster storm approaching California, we should be seeing some catastrophic erosion coming from the Rim and King Fire areas. Of course, very little can be done to prevent erosion on the steep slopes of the canyons with high burn intensity. Standing snags tend to channel water, while branches and twigs on the ground can hold back a surprising amount of soil. This flood event would have been great to document through repeat photography but, it appears that opportunity will be lost, too.

Bark beetle activity has also spiked where I live, northwest of the Rim Fire.

Access to federal sage-grouse workshop criticized

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I had been subsumed in graduate study but looking through the Denver Post grouse articles I found this story from the AP..from October. It sounds like an approach that the FS would get in trouble if they tried.. does anyone have more info?

GRAND JUNCTION — A meeting next week in Fort Collins about the greater sage-grouse has drawn fire from several western representatives who want to know why public attendance is limited while regulators focus on possible land use issues.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are conducting a workshop Wednesday and Thursday to discuss scientific questions about bird populations. Interior Department officials say the panel includes government agencies, tribes, industry and local conservation organizations.

The department says people who were invited to attend were drafted with help from wildlife agencies so they could focus on scientific issues.

According to The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, critics say scientists who favor federal limits are invited, while industries and other critics are being excluded.

“It is disappointing that the Fish and Wildlife Service workshop does not also include an examination of the data relating to population trends, in addition to questions of genetics, since many have questioned the … lack of clear data that Greater Sage Grouse populations range-wide are declining,” according to a letter sent from 18 local representatives to the Department of the Interior.

The letter urges Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to cancel the workshop and gather population and other data before the Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list the greater sage-grouse as threatened or endangered. Estimates on the number of sage grouse vary from 100,000 to 500,000, raising questions over the need for stricter limits on development.

Sage grouse are chicken-sized birds that live in sagebrush and grasslands. They are known for gathering in spring in breeding grounds called leks, where the males puff themselves out and dance for females searching for mates.

A listing would affect the way lands are managed in 11 states, including Colorado, where state and local officials say it could hamstring the energy industry, particularly in northwest Colorado.

Fish and Wildlife is expected to make a decision on the listing by September 2015.

The Saga of Sage Grouse : Blue Gov vs. Feds

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gunnison sage grouse

With all the partisan mud-slinging of the past months, it’s nice to have your delegation all together.
The story is that folks in D controlled (Hickenlooper) state of Colorado have been working assiduously to avoid listing.

Here’s the Denver Post editorial:

OPINION
Gunnison sage grouse listing snubs local efforts
By The Denver Post Editorial Board

It’s unfortunate the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service felt obliged to list the Gunnison sage grouse this week as a threatened species — unfortunate because it is unnecessary and because state and local officials have worked hard to avoid the listing through aggressive measures to protect the bird.

Indeed, Fish & Wildlife acknowledges the bird’s population in the Gunnison Basin, where over 84 percent of them reside, has been relatively stable over a number of years. And agency officials praise land-use and other measures in Gunnison County — so much so that they do not foresee imposing additionial requirements there on the grouse’s behalf.

What concerns the agency are six, smaller satellite populations, several of which have declined. Since the overall number of the Gunnison sage grouse, at 4,007, is relatively small, the agency worries that it can’t afford the loss of any of the satellite populations if the bird is to survive. “Multiple stable populations across a broad geographic area provide for population redundancy and resiliency necessary for the species’ survival,” its FAQ sheet argues.

Fair enough. But state and county officials and private landowners have not exactly been sitting on their hands in those arenas, either. They’ve been working to increase formal protection against habitat disturbances there as well. And their request for a delay in the federal listing decision so they could install additional conservation measures was supported by Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, as well as Republican Rep. Scott Tipton.

Ironically, according to the state, as recently as this summer a draft document by Fish & Wildlife recommended concentrating resources on four of the six satellite populations, as opposed to all six.

Gov. John Hickenlooper called the listing a “major blow to voluntary conservation efforts” that “complicates our good faith efforts to work with local stakeholders on locally driven approaches.”

And that is the biggest reason to regret the federal listing. While it’s hard to see how it will do much to enhance actual prospects for the sage grouse, it could end up slowing progress in protecting habitat for other species.

Hmm this raises some interesting questions.. would the NY Times, W Post LA Times or so on, editorial boards even address a question like this?

When the southern Cal forests did not (dot every i and cross every t) in working with the State, they had to go back to the drawing board based on litigation. Is that a difference in the requirements of NFMA compared to ESA? Or ?. What should the role of states be in ESA on private or public lands?

From this articles it looks as if the State might sue

Colorado blitzed the federal government, urging a delay of a court-ordered decision on whether to protect the imperiled Gunnison sage grouse.

Federal biologists since 2010 have said Gunnison grouse need endangered-species protection to prevent extinction.

But Colorado leaders on Monday proposed multiple new voluntary measures — such as possibly relocating a road used for oil and gas drilling — as the basis for extending a Wednesday deadline for legally binding federal protection.

Gov. John Hickenlooper said Colorado will sue if U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe moves ahead on the feds’ proposal to list grouse as endangered or threatened.

I’d be interested in whether and how this story is covered in the major coastal media outlets.

Long- Eared Bats Driving People Batty?

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bat2

Bats seem to be an appropriate post-Halloween topic.

I am cross posting this from Ron Roizen’s blog, “Not Without a Fight.”

Here’s a link to Senator John Thune’s piece in the Black Hills Pioneer on the bat.. it turns out that this is the same bat that is also having problems in the East (on private land). The issue seems to be that if something is problematic for a species (say a disease, in this case, but it could be climate change), then everything else that could affect the species needs to be tightened up or stopped. Which may not save the species anyway, because the issue for the species is something quite different than the targeted management. This does not seem very logical to me, so maybe someone can help enlighten me.

Here’s a quote:

In 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reached a secret sue-and-settle agreement with two radical environmental groups to require listing determinations on more than 250 species across the United States, including the northern long-eared bat. Northern long-eared bats are dying at alarming rates in parts of the country due to the spread of white-nose syndrome. Of the 39 states considered prime northern long-eared bat habitat, white-nose syndrome has only been found in 22 states, and has not been found in South Dakota.

Despite the lack of evidence suggesting white nose syndrome is a problem in our state, the FWS has proposed limiting forest management in the Black Hills to preserve the bats habitat. Unfortunately, these proposed regulations don’t address the real problem—eradicating white nose syndrome. Instead of dealing with the problem at hand, the FWS’s proposal will increase the potential for large scale wildfires, risk spreading the pine beetle epidemic, and will severely impact the Black Hills timber industry.

On October 14th, I sent a letter to the FWS with Representative Kristi Noem (R-South Dakota) encouraging the agency to withdraw its proposed listing of the northern long-eared bat as endangered and to refocus its attention on combating white-nose syndrome.