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This past week, Public Broadcasting’s Nature film series featured “The Sagebrush Sea.” The film’s main focus was on the Greater Sage Grouse, which is the emblematic creature found in this vast landscape that covers the bulk of many western states including substantial parts of New Mexico Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California, Montana and Idaho.
The movie followed the sage grouse through the year as it tries to survive in what many might suggest is a harsh environment dominated by freezing winters, and blazing hot summers. One of the themes of the film is that this ecosystem is under appreciated. What may appear at first impression to be a land devoid of life is really teeming with wildlife from the sage grouse to eagles, jackrabbits, pronghorn and mule deer.
The second theme is that this vast ecosystem is in jeopardy from a host of threats including oil and gas development, urbanization, and changes in fire regimes and the fate of the sage grouse as well as many other species is linked to the future survival of this landscape.
While the movie did a fine job of introducing people to the variety of life and beauty in the sagebrush ecosystem, it missed an opportunity to provide a more in-depth analysis of how and why the ecosystem as well as the sage grouse is threatened. No doubt it was an omission done on purpose to avoid controversy.
While the movie’s producers did mention fragmentation of habitat resulting from oil and gas development as one major threat, it failed to articulate the greatest threat coming from livestock production. Like everyone from Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell on down to some conservation organizations, there is a disconnect between the proximate causes of sage grouse decline and the ultimate cause.
full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/22/lost-in-the-sagebrush-sea/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
