{"id":7240,"date":"2018-05-15T05:33:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T05:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7240"},"modified":"2018-05-15T05:34:53","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T05:34:53","slug":"only-a-sage-grouse-in-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/05\/15\/only-a-sage-grouse-in-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Only a sage grouse in the game"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I wrote about Scott Pruitt's<\/a> attempts to undermine environmental protection at the EPA, I was blissfully unaware that he had a partner at the Department of the Interior \u2013 Ryan Zinke.<\/p>\n

The Lexington column<\/a> in last week's Economist<\/em> \u2013 the parable of the sage grouse. \u00a0This is how it starts:<\/p>\n

\"ANYBODY worried about America\u2019s ability to settle political arguments should consider the greater sage grouse. \u00a0Better still, as the May sun warms the western plains where it lives, go and watch it dance, as Lexington recently did in Wyoming. \u00a0There are few stranger sights in nature. \u00a0After spending the winter huddled in sage brush, a twiggy shrub that carpets the plains and is the backdrop to a thousand Westerns, male grouse gather on patches of open ground known as leks. \u00a0There, for several hours a day, starting at sunrise, they fan their tail-feathers into a speckled halo and emit a peculiar warbling sound by dilating air-sacks in their feathery breasts. \u00a0The unearthly chorus this makes\u2014think of a mobile orchestra of chicken-sized didgeridoos\u2014rises up from the vast and glorious Wyoming steppe. \u00a0In the lee of the snow-covered Wind River Mountains, it is a New World Eden, an expanse of yellow and green dotted with distant herds of pronghorn and wild horses. ...\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zinke seems set on allowing drilling on grouse habitat. \u00a0But, as Lexington notes, his actions are a threat to tried and tested \"collaborative, locally grounded approach to land management\". \u00a0These are now common in the western USA, especially in areas threatened by wildfire and drought. \u00a0These don't, of course, happen by accident but \"require regulatory certainty ... and a degree of mutual trust\". \u00a0Lexington concludes that Zinke\u2019s cynical stewardship of America\u2019s public lands is eroding those conditions.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Meanwhile, we have our own problems with land and wildlife, and there is much uncertainty arising from Brexit. \u00a0The Times quotes Emma Howard Boyd, the Chair of the Environment Agency as saying:<\/div>\n
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\"Farmers should lose their subsidies if they pollute rivers or cause other damage to the countryside.\"<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
She is calling for<\/a> food labels informing shoppers about the environmental impact of the farm on which it was produced which sounds like overreach if every beetroot or carrot is to carry such info. \u00a0Howard Boyd would seem to have been reading the OfScoff<\/a>\u00a0handbook.<\/div>\n
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The government is proposing \u201cpublic money for public goods\u201d \u2013 payments linked to specific environmental benefits. \u00a0Howard Boyd wants to penalise farmers who pollute. \u00a0She is quoted saying:<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cFarmers who harm the environment should lose their government grants. \u00a0There should be tougher penalties, including higher fines, for serious pollution or repeat offenders.\"<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
What's wrong with prison, people will think.<\/div>\n
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Here's a link<\/a> to Howard Boyd, if you can access it. \u00a0It seems that<\/div>\n
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\"... she has\u00a0spent her 25-year career working in financial services, initially in corporate finance, and then in fund management, specialising in sustainable investment and corporate governance.\"<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Here's another<\/a>\u00a0if you can't.<\/div>\n
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Ideal qualifications for a Chair of the EA you might think. \u00a0Not Pruitt \u2013 Zinke territory, of course, but ...<\/div>\n
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When I wrote about Scott Pruitt's attempts to undermine environmental protection at the EPA, I was blissfully unaware that he had a partner at the Department of the Interior \u2013 Ryan Zinke. The Lexington column in last week's Economist \u2013...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}