Posted on 05/13/2016 7:12:39 AM PDT by george76
Oil and gas industry groups on Thursday sued federal agencies over revisions to land management plans in Colorado and other western states to protect the greater sage-grouse.
The Western Energy Alliance and the North Dakota Petroleum Council filed the suit in North Dakota, saying the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service failed to follow proper procedures for public involvement in adopting the land use plan amendments. They also say the plans ignore sound science and will hurt western economies.
Plan revisions being challenged include ones in northwest Colorado, where greater sage-grouse habitat substantially overlaps with oil and gas fields on federal lands.
Among the suit’s contentions is that while the plans exempt powerline projects for renewable electricity transmission from plan provisions in Colorado and other states, the impacts from those projects still count against 3 percent land disturbance caps intended to protect the bird, which arbitrarily harms oil and gas and other industries.
...
Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance told reporters Thursday that strong conservation efforts at state and local levels and science showing robust sage-grouse numbers should have been deemed enough to prevent listing the bird for protection.
“Federal plans unnecessarily constrain economic growth while not getting to the heart of what is actually successful for conserving sage-grouse,” she said. Her group contends the land use plans will cost some 9,200 oil and gas jobs ...
The WEA says other entities also have sued over the plans, including the states of Idaho and Utah, Nevada counties, the American Exploration & Mining Association, the Wyoming Coalition of Local Governments, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Western Watersheds Project.
(Excerpt) Read more at gjsentinel.com ...
So they are “grousing” about the grouse? C’mon...it’s too easy sometimes.
It is NOT “Endangered”!!!
Look at it’s territory and density!!!!
It is all about Gramsci - 1930s : the slow walk thru the institutions to destroy America. Not about a bird.
If I was the oil and gas industry I would set up farms and bread 100s of thousands birds for release. Make it so that they are everywhere to the point of becoming a problem.
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