Land Control: Feds Announce Sweeping Plan to Conserve Sage Grouse Habitat

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Interior Department, will decide by September 30 whether to list the greater sage-grouse as an endangered or threatened species under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The stakes are huge: Greater sage-grouse (or prairie chicken) habitat covers 165 million acres across 11 western states, but that is only half of what it used to be, the federal government says. At one time, the greater sage-grouse population likely numbered in the millions, but it is now estimated to be in the 200,000 to 500,000 range.

The enormous sage grouse habitat also is home to American ranchers and other private land-owners, commercial interests and outdoor recreation spots. To balance those interests with a thriving sage grouse population, the federal government has been working with states and ranchers for several years on “landscape scale” conservation plans.

Two weeks ago, on May 28, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service released a proposed land use plan that will conserve sagebrush habitat, address threats to the greater sage grouse and “promote sustainable economic development in the West.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will now review the federal plan to see if the efforts go far enough in conserving the greater sage grouse habitat so that listing the bird under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is unnecessary.

Either way, westerners can expect new restrictions on the lands where they work and play.

“We have confidence that these plans will not only benefit the greater sage-grouse, but will also preserve the West’s heritage of ranching and outdoor recreation; protect hundreds of wildlife species such as elk, mule deer and golden eagles that also rely on sagebrush habitat; and promote balance between conservation and development,” the BLM said.

"The BLM and U.S. Forest Service play a very important role in greater sage-grouse conservation,” Dan Ashe, director of the FWS, told CNSNews.com via email. “We at Fish and Wildlife Service are pleased that BLM and the Forest Service recognize that strong, effective federal land management plans are vital to successful greater sage-grouse conservation.

“These plans are essential for the service’s evaluation of whether the species still warrants federal protection,” Ashe said.

According to the FWS, 64 percent of sage-grouse-populated land is owned by the federal government, 31 percent is privately owned, and 5 percent is under state jurisdiction.

The Bureau of Land Management notes that most oil, gas and other energy resources are outside of the greater sage-grouse habitat.

The federal plan to save and expand the greater sage grouse habitat has three objectives:

-- Minimize new or additional land-surface disturbances (i.e., restrictions on roads, oil and gas wells, mining, large-scale wind and solar projects, buildings, etc.)

-- Improve habitat condition (restrictions on livestock grazing as well as "monitoring" and assessment of voluntary and required conservation actions)

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, calls the federal land-use plan “just flat out wrong.”

He said if the Obama administration really cared about the greater sage grouse, it would adopt the state plans, because “the state plans work.”

“This proposal is only about controlling land, not saving the bird,” Bishop said.

At a May 19 committee hearing on the sage-grouse, Rep. Bishop said listing the bird under the Endangered Species Act would do more harm than good.

“More than 40 years ago, the Endangered Species Act was enacted with good intentions and bipartisan support to recover species at the brink of extinction,” Bishop said in his opening remarks. “Unfortunately, with less than two percent of the more than 1,500 listed species ever recovered, the law is failing.”

“Cramming thousands more species onto the list and blocking the use of millions of acres of land—including restricting even how our military servicemen can use lands for military training and readiness -- cannot be a measurement of success,” Bishop said. “States are using resources wisely to recover species and keep them off the list. We should do more to encourage them.”

States’ Rights

For years, the leaders of western states, as well as ranchers, farmers and outdoor enthusiasts have tried to keep sage habitat conservation efforts at the state level.

In March 2015, western governors released a report arguing against an ESA listing for the sage grouse.

“The Governors believe that a listing of the greater sage-grouse by FWS later this year will diminish the amount of new voluntary conservation work undertaken and have a significant, negative economic impact across the West,” the executive summary of the report states.

The report provides “compelling evidence that a listing of the bird as threatened or endangered under ESA is counterproductive and unnecessary.”

The governors’ report offers details about sweeping conservation efforts made by the states, including comprehensive sage-grouse conservation plans in place in Colorado, Nevada and North and South Dakota.

Members of the Nevada Mining Association have developed habitat conservation plans on 1.2 million acres, according to the report.

Colorado, Idaho and Montana, collectively, have put in place 350,000 acres of sage-grouse habitat through purchase or conservation easements.

In Idaho, state agencies have invested $4 million in improving and restoring habitat. The sate of Utah has completed 85 percent of a 560,000-acre project to manage tree encroachment on sage-grouse management areas.

And the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has funded more than 90 projects that treat sagebrush habitat over 83,000 acres across eight western states.

The BLM itself acknowledges that more than 1,100 ranchers and partners across the West have already worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Sage Grouse Initiative to restore more than 4.4 million acres of habitat while maintaining working landscapes.

'Disappearing sagebrush landscape'

“The West is rapidly changing – with increasingly intense wildfires, invasive species and development altering the sagebrush landscape and threatening wildlife, ranching and our outdoor heritage,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said last month, when the federal conservation plan was announced.

“As land managers of two-thirds of greater sage-grouse habitat, we have a responsibility to take action that ensures a bright future for wildlife and a thriving western economy,” she said. “Together with conservation efforts from states and private landowners, we are laying an important foundation to save the disappearing sagebrush landscape of the American West.”

”… under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA)."

I hope that patriots remember to apply rule #1 concerning all federal laws to this law. That rule is to determine if the states have ever delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to make such a law in the first place.

And in the case of the ESA, the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly delegate such power to the feds.

Consider that if the state lawmakers still uniquely elected the federal Senate as the Founding States had intended, then state lawmakers would have spurred the Senate to either kill the bill that established the ESA since the ESA stole 10th Amendment-protected state powers, or work with the House to propose a wildlife amendment to the Constitution to the states. Such an amendment would have granted Congress the specific power to make such a law if the states had chosen to ratify it.

But as a consequence of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, that amendment effectively repealing the whole Constitution imo, the ESA is just another example where the corrupt Senate failed to do its job to protect the states as the drafters of the Constitution had intended.

The 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators along with it.

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