Environmentalists are spitting mad that Republicans have added language to the defense spending bill to block the Obama administration’s so-called sage grouse recovery plan.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton says the defense bill language blocks any spending to list the bird as an endangered species and continues to allow states to pursue their own conservation efforts “without heavy-handed federal interference.”
The language can hardly be called a “rider” because the grouse plan would in fact hamper military readiness as the proposed habitat stretches across numerous training areas.
If the red-cockaded woodpecker can bring training operations to a halt at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, so can to the sage grouse across 11 states.
We can only imagine how WWII would have been fought if environmentalists had been allowed to run amok. “Sorry sir, we can’t storm the beaches of Normandy because endangered sea turtles, birds, and seaweed habitat prevented our training to undertake such a mission.”
Environmentalists boldly predicted to the Daily Sentinel that the provision would be stripped from the spending bill, just as it was in a previous year, accompanied by one of the worst soundbites ever penned by a public relations hack:
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to go through this political dance again that, unlike the sage grouse strut, serves no useful purpose,” said Clare Bastable, public lands director for the National Wildlife Federation.
With Republicans now controlling the Senate, we predict it will survive.