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endanger species: sage grouse
I posted on the current events board about this but was wondering the opinion here.
How do you feel about the upcoming decision to list sage grouse? What knowledge or experiences do you have relating to this subject?
Thanks.
Re: endanger species: sage grouse
Well, I assume they did so for a reason, and I agree with SG that protecting species that are going extinct because of us, is crucial. It can't be brought back.
I'm curious why you ask? Is there something controversial about this? I looked around, but didn't find much. I did find an article from 2004 that complained listing the sage grouse would mean 'significant restrictions on energy development'. Well ok, I'm fine with that.
The decision was prompted by Western Watershed suing the Fish Wildlife and Parks. I guess it is not as controversial as I thought if you guys are not finding any information about it. Where I live it is a pretty big issue. Sage grouse are found in 11 western states and 2 Canadian providences. There are, by some estimates, over a quarter million.
They are still hunted. I find the hunting very interesting. Sage grouse can be used as a reason to shut down oil and gas development because such activities hurt bird numbers, but hunting is fine.
Another thing I find interesting is the how devastating eagles, both golden and bald, are on sage grouse. Are people willing to choose which bird deserves protection?
Can you explain your position against oil and gas development? They are heavily regulated, especially in areas of sensitive habitat. They also provide jobs to people in places that often could not support them otherwise. Example: many ranchers near where I currently live allow drilling, work in the gas fields, work for contractors who serve oil and gas, or some combination, to augment their income enough to be able to continue to raise locally available agricultural product. Are their local product less 'good' because they are working for themselves and oil-gas?
I also agree endangered species deserve protection. However, I am also for a balance regarding the needs of nature.
I am not interested in causing a fight here. I enjoy reading this board for the perspective it brings to my life and was hoping for your insight on this matter
Thank you.
Who said anything about causing a fight? I'm really confused. Did you feel like my answer before, or SuperGreen's, was trying to be argumentative?
I'm pretty sure you can't hunt endangered species, but let's just say you can, for the sake of argument (by which I mean discussion, not a fight).
I could see the argument for allowing hunting to thin out areas of overpopulation. We've eliminated a lot of natural predators, and by protecting habitat could theoretically cause overpopulation in some areas.
According to this article http://www.trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_3cc941d7-7516-505d-afcc-1bd990708d8f.html hunting has little effect on the species.
This opinion piece from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6091334.stm is really interesting about how hunting could actually be helpful overall.
Anyways, the bottom line is that it seems to be destruction of habitat that is the problem, which hunting doesn't cause.
As for eagles and choosing who gets protection, I don't see it that way. Eagles preying on smaller birds is nature. Our devastation of their habitat -- they need unbroken swaths of grassland, as I understand it - is not.
As for the energy industry, I don't support oil dependence. I would definitely rather not purchase agricultural products subsidized by the rancher having an oil well. Part of why I buy local is to reduce oil dependence and use. We need to look into other forms of energy. I'm all for jobs, but not at any cost. Every day that we remain oil dependent and oil focused, instead of really branching out into other energy forms and changing our society to being less energy-dependent makes it very well likely we will have some hard times in the future. Oil is very expensive, it is finite, it is mostly controlled by other nations. If we ran mostly on renewable sources of energy from our own country, we'd be in a lot more of a sustainable position.
I don't live near oil production or grasslands, so that's probably why this isn't a big topic where I live.
I live in CO, which is one of the areas where the SG lives too, although I probably shouldn't chime in b/c I don't know that much about the issue except for what I have heard on NPR. I can comment that when some animals like SG are put under protection it also helps other animals. Specifically here, I believe the SG lives in some plain areas (read: ranch land). Personally I am all for the plains being restored here in CO because of animals like the SG and the Black Footed Ferret--which is most definitely on the endangered species list--it is probably the most endangered mammal in North America. Thus if the SG helps with the restoration of grasslands--I'm for it.
Having worked in a conservation area, where we indirectly got a lot of news about this kind of thing, I can say that it's extremely political and a lot goes on behind the scenes to determine which populations will go on the list and which ones will not.
I can tell you that Golden and bald eagles are NOT endangered or even threatened. They are protected under the migratory bird treaty act and bald and golden eagle act. They still cannot be hunted, captured or killed under these acts, but their numbers are stable.
Alisha_A I PPH you, you write so well and explain my line of thinking so well
When I read bellee's response, I was thinking of everything you just said.
A quarter million sounds like a lot of SG, but the Endangered Species Act (ESA) doesn't focus on a specific number of individual animals as a cutoff for "endangered", it's how much their numbers have declined, how difficult they are to breed, and how much of their prime habitat is lost. So if there were originally 5 million SG or something like that, a reduction to 250,000 is a loss of 95% of the SG population.
You cannot hunt a listed endangered species, that's the whole purpose of the legislation. The SG can be hunted now because it's not listed yet. As Alisha_A wrote, hunting small species does not significant decrease their numbers. Even with thousands of hunters, each hunter is only going to kill a few SG a day max, so that's not a huge dent in their population. Hunting is used to mimic the natural predators the species has lost (almost always from human actions) so they don't starve. Or to keep them from becoming pests. In upstate NY where DH is from, every few years some animal rights group gets deer hunting outlawed, and the deer multiply so rapidly they eat up their food supply and starve, and clog the local airport's runways and cause plane crashes.
As for eagles, animals eat other animals, that's how this works. If the SG population declines, so will the golden and bald eagles. Foundmylazy is correct about the two laws that already protect eagles.
I'm with Alisha on oil and gas exploration. We need to move to alternative forms of energy. That move is never going to be easy, so I don't accept the "the economy is in the toliet and people need jobs" excuse. It has to get done. I buy local becauses I'm trying to reduce our dependence on petroleum.
You mean a balance between nature and people, correct? The ESA is designed to preserve species that are about to vanish from the face of this planet. I can't see any cause being more noble or important than that. Humans get everything we want, including destroying the SG's habitat, poisoning their water supply (rivers and streams), and growing corn instead of the grasslands they used to rely on. The balance is always on a human's side. Even the ESA can't prevent that but at least it's something.
*joins in applause* Well-said SuperGreen!
And good point Lazy, I'm not really sure. Ok, I've tried writing out multiple sentences with some way of looking at it in which we'd have to choose sides between the eagle and the grouse, and I've got nothing.