Sage Grouse Protection (FYI)

That's a very good production about ecosystems of what is variously called "high desert" or "sagebrush steppe." I could hardly over-emphasize how difficult it must have been to find relatively untrampled steppeland in which to film so many natural processes as the producers showed. It could not have been easy.

So much of that land is being overrun or partitioned by fences that are unfriendly to wildlife, by roads, by mineral development, by over-grazed ranchland, or by invasive species such as cheatgrass, tumbleweeds and so on.

The American frontier largely bypassed the great sagebrush sea of the West because it was virtually un-inhabitable until the machine age of the early 20th century. My grandparents were among few who successfully homesteaded some of the area in the early 1900s. That has given me an intimate view of the wildlife shown in the video. But even that long experience of my youth could not capture such essence of the delicate balance and flux of nature as shown in the video.

Few people choose to backpack such areas. Water sources are very scarce and hiking trails virtually unheard of. But clearly the greater sagegrouse, perhaps limited now to around a mere 1% of their former numbers, is evidence of the rampant destruction being perpetrated against those ecosystems.

With over a century of conservation behind us, it often seems we have learned very little about how to stop the destruction — in the face of our insatiable appetite for energy development.