Sage Grouse Extension
Sage Grouse Extension. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.
On Friday, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden announced he has urged the Bureau of Land Management to extend their comment period for their draft proposal for sage-grouse management.
WALDEN: We've got hundreds of people turning out night-after-night to find out what the DEIS really means to them and their life and you can't even get a copy of it. They send you to the web to download it, it's 1200 pages and takes you an hour or more if you have access to high-speed data downloads. So they need to do better than that.
Walden said that many Oregonians have told him about the drastic impact this draft plan could have on rural communities throughout the West.
WALDEN: The outcome of the decision making process will have dramatic effects on people's livelihoods and our whole way of life so the least they can do is extend the comment period and let us at least have a chance to see the documents and the preferred alternatives and be able to weigh in with valuable input.
The document discusses six different alternative management plans. And what if the decision goes poorly?
WALDEN: If you are a part of the area that's targeted you could lose access to your allotments and that means your whole ranch is at risk in some cases. The ranchers and farmers know that ground the best and they need to have an opportunity to have an effect on the decision making of the government agency.
That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
