And there you have the liberal agenda, in a word.
For decades college professors have had their students map uninhabited areas to document “rare species”.
The process is decidedly unscientific and assigns the term “species” to distinctions as subtle as color markings, within a known species.
The objective of this “mapping” has been to have a catalog to reference in the effort to HALT DEVELOPMENT OF ANY KIND.
Every plot of land, every body of water ‘houses’ marginal populations of differentiated life forms. The individual success or failure of a given ‘species’ to thrive in a given area is part of the natural process.
In the past there have been well known pollution episodes that have been clearly detrimental to other life forms. Now, the majority of actions by the advocacy groups, Sierra Club et al, and their close friends in the various local-to-Federal governments are preventative and prescriptive, citing POTENTIAL dangers for forbidding human actions.
Thus you end up here, where marginal populations can be labeled ENDANGERED and thus activities and rights are forever encumbered by such labeling. This is a prime example of regulatory creep in that it is far beyond the original scope of the enacting regulations being used.
I’m surprised that no one on death row has claimed this protection, as their DNA is subtly different from other humans making them unique, hence endangered.
The decline of the prairie chicken is MOSTLY due to federal mismanagement of fires. It has little to do with man using the same space. I swear I am going to start a group and sue the Feds for poor fire management causing damage to Grouse habitat. Last year in Nevada they let over 7,000 acres of prime Grouse habitat burn because it costs to much to fight range fire(s).
A major agenda item for conservatives must be the return of the enormous amounts of mostly western lands that have been taken by the national government through presidential proclamations and bureaucratic rules.
Each and every president now is taking more and more lands away from the states for the most ludicrous of reasons. The most oppressed of the western states is Nevada, which has *about* 87% of its lands controlled by the national government.
However, the BLM and other agencies now no longer track how much land is controlled by the national government. Except when relatively tiny amounts of land, say 50,000 acres, are sold off by the national government for say, $75 million.
How about that for “capital gains?” Pay nothing for the land and sell it back at high prices. To who? They aren’t saying.
Some have suggested that the national government intends to sell “enclaves” of land to foreign nations, like China, which would then be their sovereign territory, like the grounds of their embassies.
Sage grouse are really nice birds. I prepare them with a marinade of lingon berry preserves, malted vinegar, and thyme and they end up tasting pretty good!