Subject: [Fwd: Agriculture Department releases funds to protect sage grouse]
Date: Aug 31 14:07:07 2004
From: Devorah Bennu - birdologist at yahoo.com


Hi Tweets,

below is the text and URL reference for a story about
conservation of Sage Grouse.

=======
ENN News Story -
Agriculture Department releases funds to protect sage
grouse
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
By Ira Dreyfuss, Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-31/s_26796.asp

WASHINGTON - The Agriculture Department offered $2
million Thursday to help private land owners in four
Western states protect the habitat of the sage grouse.

The bird, about the size of chicken, has seen its
numbers thin as its territory gets crowded by homes,
cattle, and oil and natural gas wells.

The money will be available under the Grassland
Reserve Program, which gives ranchers and farmers
dollars and technical help in protecting grassland and
shrubland. Those areas include the sagebrush where the
birds live.

The funding might help protect tens of thousands of
acres, said Bruce Knight, chief of the Agriculture
Department's Natural Resources Conservation Service.
It's "a small slice of money" but a step in the right
direction, he said.

The Agriculture Department said sage grouse numbers
had fallen by 90 percent in 20 years. Estimates of the
current population vary but generally range from
around 140,000 birds to 250,000 or more. Experts say
there were as many as 2 million when in the early 19th
century, when Lewis and Clark explored the West.

Environmental groups have asked the Interior
Department to place the birds on its endangered
species list. Doing so could sharply restrict use of
770,000 square miles in 11 states where the birds
live. About 28 percent of those acres is private land.

They were skeptical about how much can be done for the
sage grouse with the $500,000 that Colorado, Idaho,
Utah, and Washington will each get to encourage
private voluntary efforts.

"This is going to be a token amount in terms of
actually causing change on the ground," said Peter
Aengst, an energy policy analyst for The Wilderness
Society in Bozeman, Montana.

He said stronger government action is needed, such as
protecting nesting areas in spring and summer so loud
noises from oil and gas wells do not frighten the
birds away from their eggs.

However, Jim Sims, a vice president of Partnership for
the West, a business group in Denver, praised the
program. "Encouraging conservation on private land is
a hard thing to do," he said.
=======

=====
Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
Independent Scholar
birdologist [at] yahoo [dot] com



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