Posted on 03/03/2019 8:19:02 PM PST by blueplum
Leasing rights on western lands with some of the world’s highest densities of sage grouse were sold this week to energy developers for as little as $2 an acre — the result of a recent Trump administration directive to roll back Obama-era protections for the iconic bird.
Thirty-one parcels in Wyoming containing 57,800 acres of prime sage-grouse habitat are among those being auctioned online by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Conservationists call the area the “golden triangle” because of its importance for the species, which has suffered a sharp decline in the past 15 years as oil and gas extraction expanded rapidly in the grouse’s historic range.
The administration and the energy industry say federal and state restrictions on well densities and surface construction are adequate to maintain the bird populations.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Yes,substitute spotted owl,for sage grouse,add a dolop of Grey Poupon.
You could buy enough land to set up a righteous rifle range.
“Is the bird endangered at all or was it simply a convenient way for Obama to remove these lands from drilling? “
The sage grouse is to the environmentalist the equivalent of a screwdriver to an auto mechanic. It’s just a tool.
Sage grouse are the most stinking bird I’ve ever cleaned. They are dark meat and remind me of carp. Eat the cedar shingle. They fly low and slow and with 6 shot or 5 you can jack them up. Now coyotes, skunks, ravens and fox kill a hell of a lot more grouse than oil fields. Wind mills piss me off so much I won’t start it up. The birds are making a come back because we don’t hunt them as hard. Regulation and just people don’t hunt as hard as they used too. I quit hunting Huns and Chukars because we had some hard winters. A male Chukar is beautiful, they cook great and taste good but I like to see them in my yard and the pheasant have struggled too. Farmers farm hard. Not much cover left for birds in the winter. If you rely on the shit you read you don’t know much about what this issue is. Get rid of predators and restrict the seasons a little, and forget the climate change hoax. Tom, SE Idaho learn, it live, it love it. If you run from the crap your in don’t bring it here!! Fart Weasel.
“Do you have a recipe for spotted owl?”
The Northern Spotted Owl has a bit of a gamey taste - sort of a cross between Bald Eagle and California Condor.
“$2.00 acre? That’s a cheap hunting lease.”
The government also gets a fat royalty on every barrel produced, and taxes on the corporate and individual incomes generated. That is the real money.
The great bulk of the land will remain preserved for the damn sage grouses to run amok, while the focus is below ground.
With a strong dose of sage.
“Sage-grouse populations are cyclical, meaning the number of birds will vacillate between highs and lows over a period time, like a wavelength. These cycles can take anywhere from 10–15 years, and dozens of factors in addition to management actions can contribute to these variations, from drought and weather conditions to disease and predation.”
https://medium.com/usfws/sunrise-and-sage-grouse-on-sacred-ground-74a216e1058d
I figured this would be the case, as the rabbit and roughed grouse populations have cycles. My years hunting in high school were at the peak numbers for both!
While the numbers are still lower than 10 years ago, they hit their bottom a few years ago and are back on the rise.
From the article - I learned something. A “lek”. As far as I can tell it is a place (a clearing?) where the males get together to do their drumming in order to attract a female.
Now they can drill and on break shoot grouse. A dream job.
thanks, Bob! Did you take those yourself? really nice
no- i linked to a site- i thought it would have the link listed- but unfortunately it didn’t- i’m a noob when it comes to posting photos lol- here’s the site:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Sage-Grouse/species-compare/40695481
The Obama-era protections were not for the sage grouse, they were for muzzie oil producers, such as his allies in Iran.
You ever work on a rig? You ever get a half hour for lunch? You ever get off your azz? Walked through sage brush country and cleaned a sage hen and then eat it? Just Askin.
I worked on a rig in Wyoming for a summer. Not during lunch break, but we were 12 hrs on and 12 off in the middle of nowhere, lived on the rig camp. Most days I just crashed, but once in awhile would go down to the river and catch trout.
Bring them back and the cook would cook them up for us.
But yeah, I’m not sure I would have been up for lots of walking!
That’s gonna be for exploration rights, not drilling rights. I’ve leased some of my land for that although I got more like $20 an acre instead of $2. They have five years to do their testing which includes blowing test wells and other seismic testing. If they drill and strike oil then you get more.
They’re not going to do anything to hurt the danged sage grouse. Drilling for oil is almost zero impact nowadays and even if they did do anything they’re required to fix it back 10X better than it was to begin with. If anything there’ll be a lot more sage grouse there in 10 years than there are now.
It’s amazing how little city people know about the environment and energy exploration. That’s why it’s so easy for a communist like Obama to shut off millions of acres of western public lands to drilling by creating hysteria amongst city people that have no effing idea why they’re hysterical. It’s like asking a waitress to pontificate on your brain surgery.
We used to call a “lek” a disco. /sarc
Note to self. Unable to find the article about how the Sage Grouse was doing just fine in terms of numbers and that limited oil drilling wouldn’t hurt their grounds.
However, I didn’t have time to check Google because I was doing regular work.
However, almost every time some leftist environ writer does a story, they get it wrong, either through laziness, incompetence or by deliberate design.
If there is a legitimate problem with wildlife grazing/living areas, let’s work on fixing it.
I heard the SOS (same old shit) the other day about the Caribou being harmed by the oil drilling at the Anwar site in Alaska. News to me. Used to see photos of Elk, deer, etc roaming freely under the raised oil pipelines and around the structures which were miniscule compared to the land area around them.
I was a scientist for a while and found out that some “social scientists” are full of crap, leftist and professional looney-tunes.
Now that disease has infected “environmental writers” too.
Good old common sense science is under attack like it hasn’t been since the times of Galileo and Da Vinci.
The “flat earthers” are actually the “flat-headers” and AOC is now one of their leaders. Damned. Next comes burning anti-climate change proponents at the stake. Well, this time the ACC’s are armed, both with knowledge and guns.
Gonna be a better show this time.
That link in my post 30 has data from the Wind River Range area - shows the cycle on the increase.
I should figure out how to show some of my photos from mining and oil rigs from overseas. Very low regard for their workers, and no regard to the environment or the people living downstream. If the environmentalists really cared about the earth they would open up every place in the USA to mining and drilling in an effort to put those overseas operations out of business.
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