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| male displays on the lek |
Hair Further's regime will auction off 900,000 more acres of public land for fracking purposes in Nevada. The largest single public auction in the lower 48 is a bad idea because the land involved is situated next to Nevada's only national park and a national wildlife refuge known for its migratory waterfowl resting site. One lease parcel is within one mile of South Ruby Lake. Great Basin National Park has been designated a "dark sky" park in recognition of its unspoiled night sky and remote location. Only a few multi-generational ranches are nearby. That will all change with fracking operations lit by glaring floodlights and routine gas flaring. The BLM sale is scheduled for March 12th.
The sale further endangers the greater sage grouse, already listed and moves the species closer to extinction. Fracking on thousands of acres of untouched desert habitat also will impact the survival chances of the desert tortoise, a federally protected species. The BLM was forced by litigation to defer 400,000 acres of grouse habitat from leasing in October. The land is now included in the March auction; conservationists accuse the agency of doing the absolute minimum to comply with court orders. What is worse is that the regimes amendments to the sage grouse preservation plans under the previous government strip away mandatory protections to 83 million acres of western landscape, giving states and industries that sued the Obama administration everything they wanted in their lawsuits. By changing the conservation goal from "net conservation gain" to "no net loss" the anti-environment regime is sealing the fate of a depressed species that absolutely needs large tracts of undisturbed sagebrush habitat to nest and rear broods. Plan amendments also allow more intensive livestock grazing by removing an objective standard of grass height--7 inches--with the subjective standard of "adequate cover". The Trump amendments are return to the wild, wild west when only exploiters prosper and the wild can go to hell.
