See you later, Sage Grouse

I suspected it was coming.

A story in this morning’s newspaper said Montana wildlife officials are proposing to cancel sage grouse hunting this fall due to a continuing decline in population.

It was inevitable. There had been way too much optimistic blather surrounding the big birds in recent months for this to turn out well.

Members of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider the closure at their meeting today in Helena.

According to the Associated Press, officials would consider re-opening hunting next year if the bird’s numbers rebound.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.

Now it’s up to the Sage Grouse Initiative, a federal program. administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, to keep the birds off the endangered species list, and we all know how well federal program. s work.

Because of a court-ordered settlement, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service has until next year to make a final determination on whether to list the bird under the ESA. If sage grouse are listed, they’ll become Montana’s spotted owl, and farmers and ranchers across the state can expect increased restrictions on what they can do with their land.

By canceling the sage grouse season in Montana, hunters have been taken out of the mix even though hunting is not the problem. The birds’ decline has been blamed on a number of things including disease, habitat loss, and oil and gas development, but never hunting.

Nonetheless, the ones who care, the ones who actually have a passion for sage grouse are the first ones removed from the equation.

Instead of implementing a tag or quota system for our oldest upland game bird -- a creature so ancient it doesn’t even have a gizzard -- we’ve turned it into a welfare case. It’s becoming Montana’s snail darter, a critter so obscure hardly anyone can identify it, but trying to save it will cost us millions.

I wrote a story last year about the Sage Grouse Initiative for Montana Outdoors, a publication of the Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks. The story never ran. I was told it was too heavy on the hunting angle. FWP didn’t want more than a passing mention of hunting in a story about game bird.

They wanted a puff piece about how SGI is a “win-win” program for ranchers and conservationists.

“What’s good for sage grouse is good for grazing,” the SGI folks like to say.

Let’s hope all their federally funded efforts to save the bird come to fruition. Too bad they didn’t give a damn about the hunters.

Parker Heinlein is at

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