through the looking glass - people of the city


Campaign against distinction


By ALEX MCCUAIG province, city and ranchers off guard. T


The emergency order was issued under the decade-old federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) late 2013 and is the first of its kind issued in the country.


Under the order, Crown-owned leased lands will have noise, access, industrial and agricultural-use restrictions placed on a 1,700 square kilometre area in southeast Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan.


The sage grouse is not alone in its listing as endangered under SARA with another 15


he emergency order for the protection of sage grouse in southeast Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan came down swiftly in the fall of 2013, catching the


species also under the same designation in southeastern Alberta, though not covered by the emergency protection order.


These 15 species live within the boundaries of Medicine Hat, Cypress County and the County of 40-Mile, encompassing a 20,000 square-kilometre area. That represents .002 per cent of the nation's landmass but contains more than six per cent of its endangered species, making it one of the densest areas of such wildlife in the country.


These species' habitat are primarily part of the Great Plains Corridor that stretches from northern Mexico and across the American western states. It dips into the southern Canadian prairies, the fringe of these nationally endangered species' range.


Danny Fieldberg remembers the first time he laid eyes on the diminutive Ord's kangaroo


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rat with its distinctive long tail punctuated by a tuft of fur at its end.


Like many of southeastern Alberta's endangered species, it lives across the semi- arid open terrain of the short-grass prairie, populating isolated pockets containing native soapweed, sagebrush and junipers.


Fieldberg remembers his uncle coming across one of the rodents in the bottom of a bale stack and calling him over to see the elusive kangaroo rat.


"If you saw one, it was an amazing thing," said Fieldberg.


When he bought land north of CFB Suffield near Bindloss in the early 1990s, he came across another while working the dry soil of the Middle Sand Hills district.


"I got out with my son and caught it to show him and later that day as I was working I saw three more," he said.


Fieldberg says the incident led him to contact Alberta Fish and Wildlife, fence off a portion of his land and it eventually led to a three-year friendship with a university biologist studying the kangaroo rat while living on his farm.


"But most people don't know they exist. And if they disappear tomorrow, no one would know or probably care," said Fieldberg.


"For me, once I got involved with them and saw how fragile their life-cycle was . . . . any little thing that happens to them really impacts them."


But the mood reflected by ranchers formed a harder opinion.


Environmentalists and biologists have been heavily criticized. Scientific findings backing the emergency order's implementation was contrasted to what rancher's have personally seen and roundly shot down.


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Ronda and Keith Reesor graze on land near the Cypress Hills and have land affected by the protection order.


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The couple's argument against the order, and explanation of why there is such a high concentration of endangered species in southeastern Alberta, is straight forward.


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"If they are there it is because the land has been taken care of in a very good manner over these last 120 years," said Keith.


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Ronda added that over the past century, "the habitat hasn't changed ... I think in a lot of cases, the conservation groups aren't aware that the habitat hasn't changed."


She says the singular species reintroduction strategy used in the '80s for swift fox didn't take into account the effect it would have on that animal's predation of the sage grouse.


She also pointed out that Montana continues to issue hunting licenses for the bird.


The state has a two-month hunting season for sage grouse with a two-bird daily limit and licences that can be bought over the counter at sporting stores.


"Is (the sage grouse) really endangered or is it endangered because it is on the fringe area," asked Ronda with Keith suggesting it might just be part of the bird's natural ebb and flow.


Ronda also pointed to the economic fallout from the order, not just for ranchers and Medicine Hatters, "but if these orders pop up over the whole country, this is going to have an impact on oil and gas, lumber, agriculture . . . . Economically, it's going to impact the average Canadian."


The US's Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI) is trying to take a middle approach to the issue, funneling $215 million between 2010 and 2012 to improve sage grouse habitat on primarily private lands.


Americans are all too familiar with the impact on industry from a bird’s listing as endangered as memories of the battle that raged over the spotted owl for much of the 1990s still fresh.


In 2010, the sage grouse was listed under the American Endangered Species Act (ESA) with action under that listing deferred until 2015.


It’s an issue SGI is trying to bridge as it works with ranchers in advance of the 2015 deadline in the US which could see stricter controls oner controls on land us


in the US which could s land use across 11 states.


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Montana-based SGI spokesperson Deborah Richie says the organization has evolved fromd f the federal agency level to an alll-inclusive proactive conservation organization for the sage grouse across the western states. The primary purpose of SGI being, "to see if we can turn around the situation enough so that we will not need the (ESA) listing.."


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