The Sheep That Stopped The Grizzly

Sarah Gilman of High Country News provided us with an informative piece on the little sheep station that could - talking, of course, about the feds' ARS Sheep Experiment Station.  The station, headquartered near Dubois, ID, has been minding its own business for years, providing research information to the sheep industry.  But then came the grizzly bear, the Endangered Species Act, and other federal agencies whose conservationist mandates have come into direct conflict with the station's sheep experimentation.

The place is the Centennial Mountains, an east to west range on the Idaho-Montana border.  If you're having a hard time pinning the place in your mind, think of the range on the border that stretches from Island Park west toward Spencer.  The station grazes sheep there as part of their research, as they always have.  The problem is that the grizzly bears are moving into the area, and conservationists who want the grizzly population to do what it will, know that the sheep are their biggest obstacle.

But how do the sheep keep the grizzlies from moving on, further up and further in to the rest of Idaho's and Montana's unadulterated grizzly habitat?  It's simple.  If a grizzly eats a sheep, he's a dead grizzly.  The fear is that the grizzlies may become such a predation problem that the only solution is to put them down.  But the sheep station doesn't see it the same way. 

The station says it won't be a problem.  The conservationists say it will.  Who's right?  I don't know, but it would seem that the conservationists probably are.  If the grizzly gets a taste of one lamb, the station might not scream.  But if he comes back for more, and then more, and then more... well, the scream will come sooner or later from a research station running out of sheep to research.  And I do imagine that the grizzly will come back for more chops.

But this sort of internal bickering, while amusing, doesn't even get to the crux of the related issue that nobody seems to be talking about.  That is - why exactly do we want the grizzly bears to spread anyway?

I understand that conservationists, and the federal agencies that carry out the agenda, want the wild to transform back to the way that Lewis and Clark found it.  And the Centennial Mountains are the link to getting grizzlies back up into Montana, and up all the way into the Selway Wilderness.  That is their goal, and it's not one that I share.

So for now, I hope the little sheep hold in there as the trap that can keep the grizzlies back.

~ J. Bunch

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Why Sagebrush Matters

It is estimated that nearly 50% of Idaho is sagebrush steppe rangeland/high desert.  Mule deer, elk, and antelope depend upon it for protection and concealment, and coyotes and mountain lions find it ideal for stalking stealthily through.  Hawks and eagles battle with the squirrels and rabbits continually, and the battlefield is that sagebrush covered high desert.

It is important habitat for a lot of reasons.  Besides that, it is beautiful.  I was born in the wet rainforests of Western Oregon, and whenever we would cross over the Cascades to visit the dry side, I was engulfed with the vast sea of sagebrush - a mysterious place, where over any rim-rocked plateau might stand a dozen mule deer, their white nose bridges staring back.

Nothing got my heart racing like a little excursion and adventure to the high desert.  And I still feel the same way.  But conservation of the things we love does take work, at least from time to time.  It was hard for me to ever believe that there could be a shortage of sagebrush.  I have traveled everywhere in the U.S. where it exists, and the impression I got was that sagebrush was the noxious weed.  I thought nothing could stop it or threaten it, and I had pictures of the Great Basin to prove it.

But in Idaho, there are some things that do threaten the sagebrush that holds important habitat, namely fires and real noxious weeds.  The battle with noxious weeds is continual, and it unfortunately takes a great deal of public resources to fight.  Fires are generally speaking an act of God.  There's not much that can be done when dry lightning strikes the dry Southern Idaho deserts.  

Great efforts go into re-seeding burnt areas, or areas that are deficient of the sagebrush that they should have.  But this is hard work.  There's no grand commercial sagebrush seed farms.  Most of the seed comes from volunteers who go out into the desert and hand-harvest the seed.

With fires that devastated large tracts of critical mule deer habitat this past year in South Idaho, a lot of seed is needed.  If you're interested in volunteering, or in just finding out more about the issue, here's a couple of links that will lead you to some good reading:

From the Idaho Statesman, and then this one from Boise State Radio.

~ J. Bunch

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/01/10/1947622/u-of-i-master-gardener-with-minimal.html#storylink=cpy

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Conservationism & Conservatism

I am a conservative, in case you couldn't tell.  But to be more specific, and perhaps for the sake of clarity, I'm a paleo-conservative.  Old school.  You know, the kind of guy that believes the federal government should follow its Constitution (as it was written, not as it has been interpreted).

As you know, the Constitution was written to limit the federal government, not give it license to do whatever it wants. So with all of this in mind, some of my comments decrying trust in what federal wildlife agencies are up to should make sense.

My comments yesterday on Idaho's caribou situation should be taken in that light. Believe me, I am all for the caribou. I want to see the caribou flourish like the lichen on the north facing side of a 400 year old hemlock. I think they're pretty cool animals, and I hope they can make a home here.

With that said, why in the world would I trust a federal government who is blatantly inept at managing just about everything (see today's national debt)? Does over $15 trillion in debt sound like a bunch of managers with common sense? At some point, Uncle Sam, you have to realize you're out of money. My money. Our money.

But this sort of blatant disregard for simple math ( -$15 trillion = bankrupt ) trickles down in such a way as to make matters worse. The feds determined that the caribou in Idaho need 375,000 acres of "critical habitat" - a designation that puts a wide ribbon of red tape around any land in which the feds might have any control. Which is pretty much all of the land in the Selkirks.

The feds don't have the money to do this sort of thing, but for them it's easy to spend what you don't have. Unfortunately, the folks who make an income from that land will not be able to print up money to supplement their losses. When citizens print up money that has no backing, it's called counterfeiting - a serious crime. The feds, on the other hand, have this nice sounding institution called the Federal Reserve that prints fiat money for them. It's not hard to see the double standard here, but for some reason most Americans let it pass high over their heads in the clouds of ignorance.

Simply put, the feds are administering an Endangered Species Act that they have zero money to do, and zero Constitutional authority to do.  And with the caribou in Idaho they propose to make 375,000 acres of land a no-touch zone for those citizens who might otherwise profit off of the land - local economies.

But what about conservationism then? Am I not serious about conserving caribou? Of course. But the first step is to get the idiots overseeing the current conservation efforts out of the way.

~ J. Bunch

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