Rancher Royce Schwenkfelder isn't waiting for the federal government to decide whether it will protect sage grouse under the federal Endangered Species Act. He's working with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game now to develop a set of conservation measures to protect the bird on the 6,000 acres of pasture, cropland and sagebrush he and his brother, Bob, own in Washington County. He might cut his hayfield differently to ensure he doesn't kill any birds hiding there. Or he might delay when he grazes a nesting area until after the grouse have raised their chicks. "A lot of these things I already do," Schwenkfelder said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide by February whether to list the greater sage grouse across 11 states where its native sagebrush steppe habitat lies. But Schwenkfelder hopes that a novel candidate conservation agreement that the state is working on with Fish and Wildlife will give him some assurance the listing won't force him out of business. The agreement would cover 500,000 acres across western Idaho around Weiser, Midvale and Cambridge where somewhere from 300 to 600 sage grouse live among the cattle ranches, farm fields and 20-acre ranchettes that are rising in this rural area on the fringe of the Treasure Valley. In exchange for voluntary conservation efforts, ranchers would not face new regulations on their private land if the sage grouse is listed. The agreement won't prevent ranchers who graze on federal land from facing new restrictions on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management across southern Idaho. But in the area covered by the agreement, 66 percent of the land is private. The agreement would last for 30 years, and a rancher could pull out at any time...IdahoStatesman
If you have private property, they will work with you.
If you lease public land, down comes the hammer.
Why treat the leaseholder different than the landowner? Just because you can?
The voluntary, incentive based approach is the most effective regardless of the land status.
1 comment:
I think we both know why. The reason the hammer is always down on the public lands ranchers is due to the "Cattle Free in 93" crowd, who see grazing stock on the public lands(other than their fictitious "wild" herds, of course) as more or less criminal. They will do anything and everything to wipe out grazing rights in the West, as the last three decades have shown. They'll come back for the private ranchers later, probably via water restrictions or a tax infrastructure like NAIS or breeding mandates. Notice how the "Animal Rights" folks walk in lock-step with the enviros on this issue, too. Big freakin' surprise...
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