Feds rile ranchers by fencing off water for cattle — to protect a jumping mouse!
Gov Susanna Martinez just poked the Holy Emperor in the eye
Sounds like a good place to dump a couple hundred pounds of Decon. No more endangered mouse.
Woo-hoo! States rights! Freedom!
Inmates now running asylum?
If the Feds like that rodent so much they should come and round them up and take them home.
The mouse is expected to be listed as an endangered species in June.
Soooo, it’s not listed yet. Open the gates, set my
bovines free.
Who the hell are the Wildearth Guardians and why is
our government settling with them?
There’s a special law involved and it favors ranchers. I’ll have to go back and find it again.
NM who voted for zer0? gotta get some popcorn.
Does the Forestry Service have a SWAT team? Think we’ll find out?
“Many of us have families who have sacrificed lives and lands, but we trust the United States Forest Service to sustain our forest,” said Ms. Lang.
If the USFS did in fact sustain the forests, she might have a point. Yet, it seems to me, that the most spectacular and catastrophic fires in recent years are on federal lands. The policy appears to be one of Let it Grow, Let ir Rot, and Let it Burn. Untold thousands of animals have lost their lives in these BBQs, and may of them on the "endangered species" list. And now, instead of bothering to find a reasonable compromise, the USFS simply bullies its way into a solution.
“The meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius) is the most widely distributed mouse in the subfamily Zapodinae. It may be found from the Atlantic coast, to the Great Plains, as far north as the arctic tree lines in Canada and Alaska, and as far south as Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, and New Mexico.”
To even suggest that this New Mexico variety is so endangered that 193 square miles of land should be put off limits to human use is tantamount to declaring the sewer roaches of New York City endangered.
-PJ
I’m amused by all the threads on here decrying the actions of the various federal agencies (e.g. USFS, BLM et al). They don’t make the rules, they just (try to) enforce the rules, rules that are made by Congress. Rules that were demanded by you and I. That’s right. You. Me. As in “We The People”. Unfortunately, We the People doesn’t just include those of us in FReeper Land and those of us living in the hinterlands of the far west. It also includes people in New York and Boston, Tampa and Chicago, Seattle and Los Angles and even (shudder) San Francisco...
The environmental groups like the Sierra Club and a whole host of others go to the folks in these great population centers, show them a picture of a lush green forest and a clearcut or a scrawny cow kicking up dust in an overgrazed field and a picture of a beautiful meadow and a stream, and say, “Which one do you like best? Write your congressman and senator and tell them to support our programs and we can make it happen! (and by the way, send us money...)” So, legislation is passed, agencies like the EPA are built and nobody cares a whit what the professional managers say. All it takes is the price of a stamp to protest a timber sale or other action and tie it up in court for years. Everything is geared toward the protestors, even to the point of the feds having to pay their court costs. Until that process is changed so that the protestors have a little more stake in the game, nothing is going to change.
Oh, by the way. Dumping Decon isn’t going to solve anything. It’s still “Habitat”, even if the mouse isn’t there. If you have a thick northern forest with snowshoe rabbits (hares) present, it’s considered lynx habitat, even if there hasn’t been one there in a hundred years....
Every entering Lincoln National Forest should be armed with a gun and a cat.
Funny how the “progressives” could not figure out if they just had to push some folks around, the Cowpokes were the last ones who would just roll over.
Yes the WhiteyHut is very subversive to our liberty and prosperity, but they are also totally inept on every front. Good for us they can’t get their shite together.
Who no doubt get funding from the EPA...
here we go again. The ranchers have water rights. In the West, water rights are not arbitrary to the whims of some federal revenuer. Federal infringement of water rights has driven ranchers and growers in the Central Valley (Calif) out of business and is driving the free range cattle industry western-wide out of business. Think for a minute who owns these businesses and consider that these businesses (like car dealers several years ago) are being systemically attacked. Who’s doing the attacking?
We
proposed to designate approximately
310.5 kilometers (km) (193.1 miles (mi))
(5,892 hectares (ha) (14,560 acres (ac))
in eight units as critical habitat within
Bernalillo, Colfax, Mora, Otero, Rio
Arriba, Sandoval, and Socorro Counties,
in New Mexico; Las Animas, Archuleta,
and La Plata Counties, Colorado; and
Greenlee and Apache Counties, Arizona.
snip
approximately 99 percent of the total
proposed critical habitat designation,
are currently unoccupied by the species,
but are essential for the conservation of
the species.
snip
Critical habitat designation for the
New Mexico meadow jumping mouse is
unlikely to generate costs exceeding
$100 million in a single year. The total
incremental section 7 costs associated
with the proposed designation are
estimated to be $19,000,000 over the
next 20 years, or $1,100,000 on an
annualized basis (seven percent
discount rate) for both administrative
and conservation effort costs.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-04-08/pdf/2014-07629.pdf
(the 193 miles of habitat means 193 miles of river confiscated in geographic areas where water access is few and far between - but wait. there’s more! taxpayers get to pay a million a year for administrative costs for a rat. Of course, we shouldn’t mention that rats benefit from cows, since, like the turtle, it eats grasses and forbes that grow in Cow Patties)