[Statesman’s] View: It’s up to us: Act now to save an icon of the West-
Well this is good to hear, but the only thing that will save the grouse is to conserve the intact, already healthy sagebrush areas and to create some new ones. Other measures might help a little, but could well be mostly an effort to funnel money to those already well subsidized.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Now, will the livestock industry and the O&G interests honor the land use restrictions imposed by the federal agencies? Will Wiley Coyote ever catch the roadrunner? I doubt it. I have little faith in Industry complying with anything that the feds impose.
Rick
Well, there is sure one Oil and Gas industry project that is refusing to honor sage-grouse habitat.
That is the El Paso Ruby Pipeline natural gas pipeline. They think they can run over top off anybody or anything.
As was stated at a recent hearing in Washoe County, it is in the worst possible place for sage-grouse.
The Company claims the pipeline is “green” – how utterly absurd. Gas that will move through it will destroy portions of the Piceance in CO and also Wyoming country, too from drilling.
But the Route of the gas line itself is the worst. Ruby has refused to follow the Westwide Energy Corridor, and instead seeks to punch a near-straight-line route across critical sagebrush country in 4 states: Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Oregon. But Nevada is the very worst.
Ruby will destroy some of the most intact sagebrush habitats left – and areas near 50 sage grouse leks in Nevada alone.
So far, FERC and BLM have let Ruby mis-state, omit, minimize and misrepresent sage-grouse, cultural and other concerns.
If Ruby persists in its path, it will be the Poster Child for Oil and Gas arrogance and purposeful destruction of one of the last best remaining sagebrush strongholds in the northern Black Rock country, by the southern border of Sheldon.