It’s being described as a controversial plan, an abandonment of science, and a plan that could destroy the world. Okay, the last one is ours.
This terrible, no good, very bad plan is a task force.
And the forbidden thing they will study is the sage grouse protection plan formed under the Obama administration.
See the horror:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Wednesday said he wants to … shift toward the use of grouse population targets rather than preserving habitat.
That’s right, the mainstream media and environmentalists are pulling their hair out because the Interior Department is more interested in actually saving the grouse, than kicking people and development off public and private lands.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration will also look at giving more flexibility to oil and gas development in that habitat, also known as public lands.
That includes focusing on population numbers over habitat restoration, using drones to count populations and using captive breeding to increase numbers.
“I’d like to give us more tools to make sure at the end of the day that the sage grouse is not listed, and we have healthy populations,” he said.
Jim Lyons with the left-wing Center for American Progress called it a “thinly-veiled and unnecessary attempt to open up important habitat to oil and gas drilling.”
Which is ironic, because the whole grouse plan formed under the Obama administration was a thinly-veiled plot by environmentalists to lock up lands from oil and gas development.
The task force has 60 days to report their recommendations, by which time, we expect environmentalists to have convinced their followers that it marks the end of the world.
For Westerners, it marks the beginning of a brand new era that welcomes us back on public land.