Re:“,” Nov. 9 Vincent Carroll column.
This headline should have read: “U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has underreached on Gunnison sage grouse.”
The writer calls the local effort to save habitat for the Gunnison sage grouse “highly successful,” which is far from the truth. Any time local subpopulations outside of the Gunnison Basin become functionally extirpated and are being managed from the back of a truck via releases of birds transplanted from the Gunnison Basin is not a time for complacency.
Further, the suggestion by political sage-grouse czar for Colorado, John Swartout, that Colorado should not be concerned “about much smaller satellite populations” in Dolores, Rio Grande and San Miguel counties misses the point about the importance of maintaining all genetic material, as all of it will be necessary if Gunnison sage grouse are to persist.
There are no Gunnison sage grouse in Rio Grande County, and they have not been since at least the early 1940s, if then. However, small populations of Gunnison sage grouse disappeared from Eagle, Garfield, Montezuma and Ouray counties in the 1990s. This pattern is being repeated.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has known since at least 1995 what was happening to Gunnison sage grouse, as I personally took their endangered species biologist to Dove Creek in Dolores County and Miramonte Reservoir and Dry Creek Basin in San Miguel County to show him the problems. This federal agency has repeatedly underreached and delayed listing protection for about 20 years for Gunnison sage grouse. The Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife (then Division of Wildlife) has also underreached and repeatedly questioned if the Gunnison sage grouse was a separate species.
Overreached? Hardly. The federal land management agencies, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and private landowners have had about 20 years to get on board. It is now doubtful if Gunnison sage grouse will persist for the next 20 years.
Clait E. Braun is a retired avian research program manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Editor’s note: Last week, the federal government declared the Gunnison sage grouse officially threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
