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September 06, 2014 07:36 AM UTC

Pigeon Pie and Fracking Sage Grouse: On Caring for Our Furred, Finned, and Feathered Neighbors

  • 9 Comments
  • by: ClubTwitty

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

A recent story on National Public Radio about the last passenger pigeon’s death in the Cincinnati Zoo – 100 years ago on September 1—raises questions about the role and responsibility of humans in caring for the well-being of other species.

The passenger pigeon was once the most plentiful bird in North America, flocks of which would blacken the sun behind mile after mile of undulating clouds—driven to rapid extinction by human avarice, poor practice, and the absence of professional wildlife management that follows species, and science, even across state lines. 

Those human failures are what we remember the passenger pigeon for, as an article about its recent, sad anniversary in the NY Times noted: 

[We] remember the passenger pigeon because of the largest-scale human-caused extinction in history.  Possibly the most abundant bird ever to have existed, this gregarious pigeon once migrated in giant flocks that sometimes exceeded three billion, darkening the skies over eastern North America for days at a time. No wild bird in the world comes close to those numbers today. Yet 100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close attention today.

Martha’s passing merits our attention and reflection because we know better now, or at least we should.  Now we have professional wildlife management. And we have federal laws that can compel action if state management to protect vulnerable species is not sufficient to get the job done.

Although there are several federal laws that directly affect wildlife management, the one most familiar—and with good reason because it has real consequences—is the Endangered Species Act.  The ESA was signed into law by Richard M. Nixon who spoke somewhat eloquently on the value of such a federal law at the occasion.  

[This] legislation provides the Federal Government with needed authority to protect an irreplaceable part of our national heritage–threatened wildlife. This important measure grants the Government both the authority to make early identification of endangered species and the means to act quickly and thoroughly to save them from extinction.

…Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans. I congratulate the 93d Congress for taking this important step toward protecting a heritage which we hold in trust to countless future generations of our fellow citizens. Their lives will be richer, and America will be more beautiful in the years ahead, thanks to the measure that I have the pleasure of signing into law today.

It might be difficult these days to find a politician anywhere, especially a Republican and let alone in the highest office in the land, to say such things about this law today.  They are, instead, more likely to grouse about it when given the chance. 

The Greater Sage Grouse

Grouse, indeed–which gets back to the avian world, and one of the latest birds to gain fame for teetering on the brink of extinction—the Greater Sage Grouse.  

The Sage Grouse is one of America’s iconic species—at home on the ‘Sagebrush Sea,’ those broad expanses of high desert sage and grasslands that stretch across portions of eleven western states.  And although its habitat is large, its numbers have plummeted in recent decades, and the Greater Sage Grouse is—by all accounts—a species in grave trouble.   Listing of the bird under the Endangered Species Act is imminent unless there is a viable plan in place quick to bring the bird back from decline and begin to return its populations to the western country where it was once so abundant. 

Since a listing would trigger federal protections it is contentious.  The conflict partly arises from, or is at least complicated by, the shared responsibility by which the federal and state governments manage the lands’ species as a ‘public trust.’  

This means that although certain matters fall under federal jurisdiction—like protection for endangered species and their habitat—generally wildlife is managed primarily at the state level via the various departments of fish and game, like Colorado Parks and Wildlife.  Thus state agencies often find conflict with what they believe to be federal over-reach, grumbling about things like a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, having developed state-based conservation plans.  

Not surprisingly this position finds common cause with special interests that oppose any and all additional regulation, who seem to prefer to take their chance with malleable state legislatures, local commissions, and regulatory bodies, than to abide by the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. And in this case it is the Sage Grouse that gets caught in the middle.   

…and Fracking

Like many of the land use conflicts roiling Colorado, this one too has its roots in drilling and oil and gas.  There are undoubtedly a group of western interests opposed to any additional protections for, well…anything.  This includes the Greater Sage Grouse.  But chief among the opponents are oil and gas companies and the associations that represent them, because, well…everything. 

Much of what oil and gas drillers and frackers care about—which is to say oil and gas—flows from out of the ground.  What is on top is—at the end of the day—an impediment to that.  At the landscape level, oil and gas development represents the largest threat to sage grouse habitat and thus to the species’ survival.

In Colorado sage grouse habitat sits mostly in the Piceance Basin, which itself sits atop large reserves of natural gas that could likely once again be a valuable commodity.  That puts protection of the sage grouse at odds with those that still dream of gasfields stretching from Dinosaur National Monument to the flanks of the Grand Mesa and beyond. 

And since much of this is public land, the federal government is involved in managing large swaths of sage grouse habitat regardless of a listing or in spite of it.  This is particularly true of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s sister agency in the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management. And the BLM in particular needs to step up in its role to prioritize protection of sage grouse habitat.  To get there in Colorado, Gov. Hickenlooper needs to be pushing the BLM to put strong protections in place NOW on federal lands to help avoid any listing. 

Voices that decry any protection will scream of course, as they always do–delicate things that they are.  Which means the governor needs to also show the oil and gas industry that it is in its interest as well to want meaningful protections for the sage grouse; and, that the industry bring real solutions to the table. Or face a federal listing.   

The governor could join a number of conservation, wildlife and other stakeholder groups that have urged the oil and gas industry to do just that in Colorado. 

The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union issued a statement in June, when western governors were meeting in Colorado Springs, about the need to come together and find real solutions to protect the sage grouse and its habitat:
 

It’s a daunting task, but we can do this. A lot of hard work has already been put into developing sage-grouse conservation plans by state governments and federal agencies, but more action is needed.  There’s still time, but our governors and federal land managers must act soon to finish those plans.

 

Tough choices and decisions will need to be made, absolutely. But those solutions need not be a winner-take-all approach. …

 

We can get it done, and now it’s time for other states and the federal government to step up. Finding homegrown solutions now—not several years down the road—keeps the states, and landowners, in the driver’s seat, and gives us the certainty that we need to make our living on the landscape. That’s a good thing. When solutions are built from the bottom-up, they have more buy-in by stakeholders and often better respect their needs.

 

A broad set of stakeholders including the farmers' union and conservation groups have made the offer – but for now the oil and gas industry has rebuked it.   And that’s a mistake that the governor should call it out on because we all have to gain from acting expeditiously to protect the sage grouse.  

 

Our appetite for pigeon pie, for cheap energy, for exported gas, and accumulated profit is a fleeting thing.  And no future generation will look back on politicians of today with kindness because they squeezed another thousand cubic feet from the gas patch while killing off the last sage grouse. 

The NY Times article puts it like this: 

It seems that whenever humans discover bounty, it is doomed to become a fleeting resource. The fate of cod fisheries in the late 1900s mirrors that of the passenger pigeon a century before. Pacific bluefin tuna, down 96 percent from their unfished numbers, may be next in line.

Countless such examples exist around the world, but the good news is that we still have time to reflect on them before their populations dwindle down to their last respective Marthas.    …[There are] clear lessons that — had we followed them in the late 1800s — could have saved the passenger pigeon.

Here’s hoping that the State of Colorado pushes its partners—from the federal government and other states to its fellow stakeholders on the private and public lands, to act now and in a meaningful way to protect the Greater Sage Grouse.  Because the opportunity to take action is also fleeting.  If the state does not get strong protections in place soon, it will get what many think it deserves—an Endangered Species Act listing for the sage grouse.  ​

 

Comments

9 thoughts on “Pigeon Pie and Fracking Sage Grouse: On Caring for Our Furred, Finned, and Feathered Neighbors

  1. Thank you for emphasizing this important, often overlooked aspect of environmantal protection, ct. The enemy we face could not possibly care less about the fate of the Greater Sage Grouse, or any other species which can't be hunted for "sport" and profit, or which stands in their way of drilling, mining, or otherwise developing still more farmlands, wetlands, and open space — again, as always, for personal profit.

    I'm disgusted that in 2014, we STILL find the Endangered Species Act in danger of full repeal by the GOTP and its minions, not to mention their relentless war on ANWR, their attempts to weaken or overturn the Wilderness Protection Act, the Clean Air and Water Acts, etc., etc.)

      1. Sadly, it's not terrible far off topic...

        BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the American Legislative Exchange Council urges Congress to amend the Endangered Species Act upon its re-authorization to require a stronger role for the states and a stronger consideration of the social and economic consequences, including takings, in whole or in part, in the designation of critical habitat and in the development and implementation of recovery programs for threatened or endangered species, and

        Which is Alec 'code' for, "listen mofo's, do you think we're going to let a bird stand in the way of freedom!!  liberty!!  energy independence!!??!!

        "Drill baby, drill"…. or as I'd say, "labodomy baby, labodomy"

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