There’s just no pleasing some people, especially bureaucrats in the Polis administration and radical environmentalists — but we repeat ourselves.
BLM officials already redrew plans to offer oil and gas leasing on 83 parcels in Colorado to protect the grouse.
Now, greenies are screaming that drilling would be too close to habitat for deer, elk, and other plentiful critters not considered threatened, endangered, or too cute to exist within 100 miles of civilization.
Adding grave insult to injury, the anti-energy advocates are citing the presence of Lesser Prairie Chicken in southeastern Colorado near some parcels as a reason to delay the lease sale.
How did the birds get there in the first place?
State wildlife biologists in April caught lesser prairie chickens in Kansas and released them in southeast Colorado as part of a multi-year program to rebuild the bird’s population.
So now we’re importing critters that are under consideration for endangered species listings, and we’re dropping them off at proposed BLM drilling sites?
The Lesser Prairie Chicken isn’t even a species, it’s a subspecies.
Ironically, Western Slope ranchers have suspected for decades that greenies or government workers were trying to sneak threatened species onto their land to stop grazing and other activities.
At least now, government admits to doing it.