Posted on 07/05/2014 2:34:17 PM PDT by PoloSec
DENVER (AP) -- An obscure, chicken-sized bird best known for its mating dance could help determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate in November.
The federal government is considering listing the greater sage grouse as an endangered species next year. Doing so could limit development, energy exploration, hunting and ranching on the 165 million acres of the bird's habitat across 11 Western states.
Apart from the potential economic disruption, which some officials in Western states discuss in tones usually reserved for natural disasters, the specter of the bird's listing is reviving the centuries-old debates about local vs. federal control and whether to develop or conserve the region's vast expanses of land.
Two Republican congressmen running for the U.S. Senate in Montana and Colorado, Steve Daines and Cory Gardner, are co-sponsoring legislation that would prevent the federal government from listing the bird for a decade as long as states try to protect it.
"Montanans want locally driven solutions," Daines said in an interview. "They don't want bureaucrats thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., dictating what should happen."
Environmentalists and the two Democratic senators being challenged, John Walsh in Montana and Mark Udall in Colorado, oppose the idea. They say they don't want a listing, either, but that the threat of one is needed to push states to protect the bird.
"A bill like what some in the House are proposing that would delay listing the bird would actually undermine locally driven efforts," said Udall spokesman Mike Saccone.
The greater sage grouse is described in the journals of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and it once roamed widely across the massive sagebrush plateaus of the West's interior.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
12 guage bird shot?
birds are more important than American citizens. but, with this POS regieme, illegal, disease ridden, illiterate, parasitic criminals are more important than American citizens. i fact terrorists and jew haters are more important too
“I have a pen and a phone,,,,”
“Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool.”
Grouse and fried spuds ping
If ever this was a human-caused disaster, this is a WMD.
The Endangered Species Act is so abused it should be discarded in its entirety.
It won’t have any effect on the Senate elections because Obama is not going to list it until after the election.
Obama may be a narcissistic emperor wannabe but he isn’t stupid (at least when it comes to politics).
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Isn’t it still legal to hunt sage grouse in other places?
This is nothing but another land grab.
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