...Spring also heralds another local rite: In meeting rooms,
public-lands ranchers, wildlife biologists, mountain bikers and
government officials gather to discuss how to help the Gunnison grouse. The working group is close to committing to a voluntary plan with the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Gunnison grouse and its
public-land habitat. Candidate conservation agreements, as these plans
are called, are often intended to keep a species from being listed. But
land managers aren't assuming this last-minute agreement will keep the
grouse off the roster. Instead, stakeholders hope that the recovery
measures will be good enough so that, even if the grouse is listed,
restrictions placed on land use will be less severe. With reams of other listing decisions now looming, participation in
candidate agreements is growing in the West. More than 1,000 plants and
animals are slated for decisions by 2018 under settlement agreements
between Fish and Wildlife and two environmental groups. The Gunnison grouse's conservation agreement will cover 397,000 acres
of public lands, two-thirds of the bird's occupied habitat. It will
keep recreation and ranching away from leks during key periods, and also
monitor the impacts of roads, trails and grazing. Land managers have
previously evaluated such disturbances separately; now, says Samantha
Staley, project manager with the Bureau of Land Management's Gunnison
field office, officials will be able to account for the cumulative
effects.The agreement complements efforts on private property, where some
landowners have signed on to protect the Gunnison grouse through a
similar tool, called "candidate conservation agreements with
assurances." Through those pacts, ranchers, farmers and developers
manage their lands to help candidate species -- with the guarantee that
they won't face additional regulations if populations decline despite
their efforts, or if the species is listed as threatened or endangered...
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1 comment:
Conservation agreements with assurances have been promoted in Nevada for at about ten years. I recently asked a Fish and Wildlife Service biologists how many of these conservation agreements (with assurances) have been signed in Nevada. She knew of two.
The same biologists and her companions complained that the various Indian Tribes were not coming to their sage grouse meetings. I suggested that the ancestors of todays Tribal members went to government meetings 150 years ago and entered into treaties. We can all see how that worked out. Now the same government wants the current residents of the same areas to sign contracts called conservation agreements with assurances. It is really hard to see any difference between the Nineteenth Century Treaties and the Twenty-first Century conservation agreements. It looks like another example of doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.
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