Audubon Awarded Sweetheart Contract By BLM
BLM looks to Audubon to map sage grouse habitatAP, Billings Gazette, 02/17/2010 [here]
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is looking to Audubon Wyoming to map sage grouse habitat across the 11 states where the bird is found.
Sage grouse have been losing their sagebrush habitat for decades and now face listing under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expects to announce a listing decision next week.
New regulations resulting from an endangered or threatened species listing could substantially affect a variety of land uses across the West, including gas development and wind energy.
The BLM plans to award a contract for mapping sage grouse habitat to the Audubon Wyoming by early March. The contract amount has not been negotiated yet but won’t exceed $100,000, said Chad Hepp, a BLM contracting officer in Denver.
Audubon already works with various state agencies that have been studying where sage grouse habitat exists, Hepp said Tuesday. He said the group should be able to draw from that data without having to do new field research.
“We’re trying to pull everything into one central database and map it,” Hepp said.
The state wildlife agencies studying the greater sage grouse include the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, which with help from Audubon Wyoming created maps before the state announced core habitat zones for the species in 2008.
“This is an extension of the same work we’ve already done,” said Brian Rutledge, executive director of Audubon Wyoming. “Which just makes the most sense to do. Why reinvent the wheel?” …
Note: What the article convenient leaves out is that the Audubon Society has been a frequent plaintiff in lawsuits against the US Fish and Wildlife Service to force the Federal Government to list the sage grouse as an endangered species.
And now here comes this sweetheart no-bid contract. Conflict of interest? Extortion? Can their funky old counts done for lawsuit purposes be trusted? Exactly which invented wheel are they talking about?
Once again, your tax dollars at work, or at something.
