Posted on 03/30/2014 10:38:30 AM PDT by george76
Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West?
Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development.
In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the protected list by 2018. The two species with the greatest impact on private development are range birds—the greater sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken, both about the size of a barnyard chicken.
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The sage grouse is found in 11 western states—California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Most of the areas affected are federal lands routinely used for farming, ranching, mining, road building, water projects and oil and gas drilling.
However, much of the prairie chicken population and some sage grouse are on private property that could become subject to some of the most invasive private land-use rules and property acquisitions in the history of the protected-species law.
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Environmental groups have won victories by using a strategy called "sue and settle" under which groups propose species for protected status and then sue the federal government, which settles the lawsuit on terms favorable to the greens rather than fight. These settlements typically bypass a thorough review of the scientific evidence and exclude affected parties, such as industry and local communities.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This explains obama’s dithering on the approval of the Keystone pipeline: giving the nature nazis time enough to work up a scam that will permit a veto.
It must be the poor, little, ENDANGERED, little, helpless, HUNGRY, cute white boy in me.
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Touche...good one!
Chopping them up with windmills is fine. Doing absolutely nothing harmful to them with low impact oil rigs is bad.
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