Thursday, March 19, 2015

Old Growth Sagebrush

Here's a bit from those paisley-masked riders of the purple sage who know more about the West then the actual residents do in spite of never actually having spent any time here except maybe to go skiing.

“We think about redwood forests in California as old growth forests, we think about my home State of Washington, the Olympic peninsula, and the old growth trees there as really incredible habitat worthy of protection. We have old growth sagebrush ecosystems throughout the great basin that are equally important to 350 species, Greater Sage Grouse is one of them but mule deer, pronghorn antelope, hundreds of other species call these places home.”

Boldening is mine. What they want is a moratorium on development of any sort whatsoever. They have friends to look after and if Colorado produces a lot of oil, this depresses Al-Quaida's bomb budget. Can't have that.

4 comments:

Merle said...

HMMM, just what is the life span of a sage bush?

Merle

Billll said...

According to the article, somewhat over 100 years.

Merle said...

Well then, I never considered 100 years to be "old growth" at least as far as trees are concerned. Yep, just another power grab!

Merle

Brad K. said...

Then there is the life cycle of the much-maligned mosquito.

Think of the variety of fishes that consider mosquito larvae basic diet, and the fish that live on the mosquito larvae eaters, etc.

Killing that mosquito on your neck might mean the loss of several species of fish; the natural order of things would let her -- only female mosquitoes draw blood from mammals, required to fertilize their eggs -- snack down, and breed up the next generations of fish-food makers! It is only a bit of an itch, for a while, not a real annoyance (unless you signed up for ObamaCare, or ObamaCare redefined your health insurance)!