Sen. Bennet leads charge for sage-grouse conservation funding

In a bid to avoid an endangered species listing for greater sage-grouse, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett led a group of fellow Democrats urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to fully fund an array of conservation measures by multiple federal land management agencies. The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies have all requested funding to continue efforts to protect sage-grouse habitat, and few weeks ago, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a $4 million initiative to restore sagebrush ecosystems across the interior West. “These funding pools are essential to ensuring that efforts to improve habitat through restoration, enhancement, and conservation easements continue and are effective. These collective efforts represent our best strategy to maintain and conserve grouse populations, and hopefully will help to prevent the need for sage grouse species to be managed under the Endangered Species Act,” Bennet and his colleagues wrote. The letter to Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran and Ranking Member Barbara Mikulski was signed by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)...more

You see how they set these up:  use the courts to threaten a listing, then use the threat to coerce more money out of local, state and federal budgets.  More $$$ makes the enviros & bureaucrats happy, leaves the landowners scared to death and the taxpayers screwed.  

If the R's don't fully fund, the D's will blame every bad thing that happens on the R's failure to fund instead of the ESA.

Solution:  The courts set an arbitrary date on listing, but Congress has the authority to change that date.  So change it and allow time for a reasonable and efficient outcome.

The R's can cave and show they too just want to spend more.  Or, they can change the date.

Let's watch and see which option the Republican majority picks.