Wally Dog
Well-known member
NYTimes article
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: December 3, 2004
ASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Amid an intense lobbying effort by energy and ranching interests in the West, a team of Interior Department biologists has recommended that the sage grouse, a bird whose sagebrush territory has been vastly reduced by farming and development, is not threatened with extinction and does not for the moment need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Advertisement
Craig Manson, the assistant Interior secretary in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service, gave word of the recommendation on Thursday to Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Resources and a fierce critic of the Endangered Species Act, Mr. Pombo's press secretary, Brian Kennedy, said.
Steve Williams, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, must make the final decision about whether to put the bird on the endangered list by Dec. 29.
Not since the spotted owl achieved protected status, prompting a 1991 court ruling that vastly curtailed logging in Northwestern forests, has a proposed listing had as much potential economic impact. The petition to have the government protect the sage grouse has provoked energetic lobbying and legal maneuvering, with much of the biological science about its population trends and habitat coming under concerted attacks.
The recommendation, which will be announced at the Western Governors' Association meeting in San Diego on Friday, followed the recommendations of the Western governors' group, the oil and gas industry and cattlemen's groups. In the 11 states that are home to the sage grouse, energy companies and ranchers would have faced significantly increased costs and regulatory delays if it had been listed as endangered.
Environmentalists had sought the listing, saying that sage grouse populations, while now stable, are poised for a catastrophic decline because of development and invasive species like cheatgrass, which combines with wildfires to consume their habitat, as well as diseases like West Nile virus.
In recent years, partly because of the increasing possibility that the sage grouse would be granted federal protections and partly because of their own concerns about the health of the species, various states, private landowners and scientists formed local and regional partnerships to improve conditions for it, several scientists said Thursday.
A few weeks ago, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, the largest single landowner in the West, which controls about half of the 258,000 square miles of existing sage grouse territory, announced its own conservation plan.
While Mr. Kennedy said the agency was likely to accept the recommendation not to list the bird as endangered, he added that the fight was likely to continue in court.
Mark Salvo, director of the Sagebrush Sea Project, an Arizona conservation group that had petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to grant federal protection, said, "By not listing the species, damaging activities will be allowed to continue on much of the sagebrush steppe, to the detriment of sage grouse and scores of other species."
Mr. Salvo said no decision on legal action could be made until the final ruling from the Interior Department.
"We will with our attorneys review the decision," he said. "However, it would appear in our opinion that the only science that the Bush administration has based this decision on is political science. It would appear they are paying back their political base in the grazing and oil and gas industries."
Jeff Eisenberg, a director of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said: "The livestock producers are grateful that cooperative conservation efforts will be given a chance to show that they are a viable solution for conserving species. Should the department follow the recommendation, the cattlemen think this will carve new territory in species conservation and we will work hard to make sure it succeed."
This summer, several of the leading wildlife biologists who study the sage grouse and its habitat produced a 610-page "conservation assessment," reviewing the available scientific evidence about the bird.
While the populations have been relatively stable since two decades of steep and steady decline ended in 1985, they wrote, "we are not optimistic about the future of the sage grouse because of long-term population declines coupled with continued loss and degradation of habitat."
The Partnership for the West, a coalition of industry and property-rights groups, called the report a biased document based on "unreliable and inaccurate data."
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: December 3, 2004
ASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Amid an intense lobbying effort by energy and ranching interests in the West, a team of Interior Department biologists has recommended that the sage grouse, a bird whose sagebrush territory has been vastly reduced by farming and development, is not threatened with extinction and does not for the moment need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Advertisement
Craig Manson, the assistant Interior secretary in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service, gave word of the recommendation on Thursday to Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Resources and a fierce critic of the Endangered Species Act, Mr. Pombo's press secretary, Brian Kennedy, said.
Steve Williams, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, must make the final decision about whether to put the bird on the endangered list by Dec. 29.
Not since the spotted owl achieved protected status, prompting a 1991 court ruling that vastly curtailed logging in Northwestern forests, has a proposed listing had as much potential economic impact. The petition to have the government protect the sage grouse has provoked energetic lobbying and legal maneuvering, with much of the biological science about its population trends and habitat coming under concerted attacks.
The recommendation, which will be announced at the Western Governors' Association meeting in San Diego on Friday, followed the recommendations of the Western governors' group, the oil and gas industry and cattlemen's groups. In the 11 states that are home to the sage grouse, energy companies and ranchers would have faced significantly increased costs and regulatory delays if it had been listed as endangered.
Environmentalists had sought the listing, saying that sage grouse populations, while now stable, are poised for a catastrophic decline because of development and invasive species like cheatgrass, which combines with wildfires to consume their habitat, as well as diseases like West Nile virus.
In recent years, partly because of the increasing possibility that the sage grouse would be granted federal protections and partly because of their own concerns about the health of the species, various states, private landowners and scientists formed local and regional partnerships to improve conditions for it, several scientists said Thursday.
A few weeks ago, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, the largest single landowner in the West, which controls about half of the 258,000 square miles of existing sage grouse territory, announced its own conservation plan.
While Mr. Kennedy said the agency was likely to accept the recommendation not to list the bird as endangered, he added that the fight was likely to continue in court.
Mark Salvo, director of the Sagebrush Sea Project, an Arizona conservation group that had petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to grant federal protection, said, "By not listing the species, damaging activities will be allowed to continue on much of the sagebrush steppe, to the detriment of sage grouse and scores of other species."
Mr. Salvo said no decision on legal action could be made until the final ruling from the Interior Department.
"We will with our attorneys review the decision," he said. "However, it would appear in our opinion that the only science that the Bush administration has based this decision on is political science. It would appear they are paying back their political base in the grazing and oil and gas industries."
Jeff Eisenberg, a director of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said: "The livestock producers are grateful that cooperative conservation efforts will be given a chance to show that they are a viable solution for conserving species. Should the department follow the recommendation, the cattlemen think this will carve new territory in species conservation and we will work hard to make sure it succeed."
This summer, several of the leading wildlife biologists who study the sage grouse and its habitat produced a 610-page "conservation assessment," reviewing the available scientific evidence about the bird.
While the populations have been relatively stable since two decades of steep and steady decline ended in 1985, they wrote, "we are not optimistic about the future of the sage grouse because of long-term population declines coupled with continued loss and degradation of habitat."
The Partnership for the West, a coalition of industry and property-rights groups, called the report a biased document based on "unreliable and inaccurate data."
