Free Republic

A federal judge this week denied a temporary restraining order sought by environmental groups that would block grazing in six eastern Oregon pastures. The Capital Press reports U.S. District Judge Michael Simon said the plaintiffs haven’t shown that turning cattle out on the pastures will cause irreparable harm to sage grouse or to rangeland research. He said continued grazing isn’t likely to irreparably harm the ability of environmental plaintiffs to enjoy undisturbed sagebrush grassland, since the pastures have long been grazed and are rested on a rotating basis. The case was filed against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management by...

Three environmental advocacy groups Monday filed suit to block the renewal of a 10-year grazing permit for Hammond Ranches Inc., run by Dwight Hammond Jr. and son Steven Hammond. Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Wildearth Guardians filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Pendleton against the interior secretary, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the district manager of the land bureau’s Burns District office. The three groups argue that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s renewal of the grazing permit after the Hammonds were issued pardons violated federal administrative regulations because it failed to consider the...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday published documents detailing its plan to roll back Obama-era protections for the vast habitat of the greater sage grouse, a chickenlike bird that roams across nearly 11 million acres in 10 oil-rich Western states. The earlier proposal to protect the bird, whose waning numbers have brought it close to endangerment, was put forth under the Interior Department in 2015 and set out to ban or sharply reduce oil and gas drilling in 10.7 million acres of its habitat. The Trump plan, by contrast, would limit the grouse’s protected habitat to just 1.8 million...

Accountability is sorely lacking in the administrative state. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make decisions significantly affecting our daily lives with too little involvement from our elected officials. The Congressional Review Act was intended to restore at least some degree of democratic accountability to the administrative process. It requires agencies to submit to Congress every rule they wish to impose on you, giving the people you elected an opportunity to oversee what federal bureaucrats are up to. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, agencies have failed to comply with their obligations under the statute, withholding rules from Congress and thereby avoiding...

After years of creating headaches for the oil-and-gas industry, the greater sage grouse is now standing in the way of renewable energy. The U.S. District Court in Portland on Wednesday killed a major wind-energy project slated for southeast Oregon over concerns about its impact on a local sage grouse population in a victory for environmental groups, which had fought the proposal for years. The 104-megawatt project, which would have spread up to 70 wind turbines and a transmission line across 10,500 acres in rural Harney County, was decried by environmentalists as an “industrial scale wind development” that would have disrupted...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

Oil and gas industry groups on Thursday sued federal agencies over revisions to land management plans in Colorado and other western states to protect the greater sage-grouse. The Western Energy Alliance and the North Dakota Petroleum Council filed the suit in North Dakota, saying the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service failed to follow proper procedures for public involvement in adopting the land use plan amendments. They also say the plans ignore sound science and will hurt western economies. Plan revisions being challenged include ones in northwest Colorado, where greater sage-grouse habitat substantially overlaps with oil and gas...

Once again the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] has failed to notify the appropriate local officials and agencies of the spill in a timely manner.” These are the words of U.S. Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO) of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in response to another toxic spill resulting from EPA activities at an abandoned mine in western Colorado. According to the Denver Post, an EPA mine crew working Thursday at the Standard Mine in the mountains near Crested Butte, triggered another spill of some 2,000 gallons of wastewater into a nearby mountain creek. Supporting Tipton’s remarks to Watchdog Arena, the Denver Post...

The Interior Department said Tuesday that the greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose vast range spans 11 Western states, does not need federal protections ... The fight over whether to list the bird as endangered or threatened recalled the battle over the spotted owl 25 years ago, where federal protection greatly impeded the logging economy. ... could help defuse a potential political liability for Democrats heading into the 2016 election; ... House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said Tuesday's announcement was a "cynical ploy" intended to mask the fact that the Obama administration has imposed limits on development...

The sage grouse population has exploded in the last two years, growing by nearly two-thirds from more than 49,000 males in 2013 to more than 80,000 this year. ... This is encouraging news for the bird, and for the people whose lives would be turned upside down by the federal government if it still insists on listing the critter as an endangered species on the brink of extinction. The report considered the population across the bird’s 11-state habitat, with specific news on the growth in Colorado numbers ... The report falls on the heels of a gloom and doom forecast...

Garfield County officials said Monday the Bureau of Land Management is considering even-stricter measures to protect greater sage-grouse than previously contemplated, rather than listening to concerns the county and others have raised. As a cooperating agency, the county got an advance look Friday at the revised proposal the agency is now considering. “It is very dramatic in terms of the changes (from a draft BLM proposal) that are being proposed,” Fred Jarman, the county’s community development director, told county commissioners Monday. Jarman and Garfield Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said the proposed measures are the result of directives coming from Washington, D.C....

Efforts to protect the greater sage grouse in its 11-state territory are multiplying, according to a report from the Western Governors’ Association released Thursday, and Northwest Colorado’s sage grouse population is seeing significant growth as a result. The report is a comprehensive inventory of public and private conservation initiatives in 2014 throughout the bird’s range in 11 western states, including Colorado. Northwest Colorado is home to about two thirds of the state’s greater sage grouse population, which grew by 30 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to Senior Wildlife Biologist Brad Petch with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. ... Moffat, Routt...

Mesa County commissioners have thrown their first jab in a growing fight against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the department’s decision last November to list the Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species. Commissioners on Monday approved and signed a notice of intent to sue the federal government for listing the Gunnison sage-grouse as threatened and for designating a critical habitat for the bird in western Colorado and eastern Utah. The notice of intent to sue claims the listings are improper because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted the Gunnison sage-grouse population in the Gunnison Basin is “stable...

According to findings from The Tombstone Marshal’s Office (TMO), a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officer was mistaken for a man impersonating an officer.. On January 28th, while traveling east on Charleston Road, a sixteen year old driver reported to the Tombstone Marshal’s Office that she observed a male driver in a white truck look at her as he passed and then turned around and begin travelling eastbound behind her before pulling her over with emergency lights flashing on the dashboard. The female advised that she pulled to the side road and the male exited his vehicle and approached her...

Two environmentalist groups filed suit Tuesday seeking stronger protection for a bird found only in Colorado and Utah ... The Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project said in court papers that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should go back and produce an “adequate finding” on the status of the Gunnison sage grouse ... The threatened designation could result in restrictions on oil and gas drilling, agriculture, recreational and other land uses. ... both camps will be watching litigation closely, in part to see how it might influence policy on the more common greater sage grouse. The...

Washington, DC – Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today issued a Secretarial Order calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. The strategy will begin to be implemented during the 2015 fire season. Goals include reducing the size, severity and cost of rangeland fires, addressing the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive species, and positioning wildland fire management resources for more effective rangeland fire response. “Targeted action is urgently needed to...

U.S. wildlife officials will decide next year whether a wide-ranging Western bird species needs protections even though Congress has blocked such protections from taking effect, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Wednesday. They could determine the greater sage grouse is heading toward possible extinction, but they would be unable to intervene under the Endangered Species Act. The bird’s fate instead remains largely in the hands of the 11 individual states where they are found. President Barack Obama signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill late Tuesday with a provision that barred money from being spent on rules to protect the chicken-sized bird...

DENVER — Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper made good Friday on his promise to sue the federal government over its hotly contested move to list the Gunnison sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a notice of intent to sue with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Fish and Wildlife Service director Daniel M. Ashe, arguing that the agency’s Nov. 12 decision to list the bird as threatened was flawed and failed to appreciate fully the impact of aggressive state and local conservation efforts. “The Service failed to use the best available science in its listing...

Included in the massive, $1.1 trillion bill unveiled late Tuesday that would fund most of the government through next fall are several policy “riders” on energy and the environment supported by Republicans, adding fuel to what is already shaping up to be a fight between the GOP and the Obama administration over environmental policies next year. Republicans said the spending bill stops the listing of the sage-grouse as an endangered species — a move by the administration after the midterm elections that Democrats and the GOP alike had criticized. The federal move to protect the bird was seen as having...