Better LPC solutions found closer to home

Federal overreach hurts everyone.

The Edward Snowden affair showed us how far government has gone in gathering information on all of us, endangering privacy.

Because of misguided federal “No Child Left Behind” policies, teachers teach tests, and children are learning only how to pick from five options to black out a choice.

Nowhere is federal overreach more prevalent than in environmental protection. Remember the snail darter? This little minnow that resides in a few muddy ponds in Tennessee for a long time stopped construction of a much-needed dam along the Tennessee River.

Now, consider the federal government’s response to the plight of the lesser prairie chicken.

If there were undeniable evidence that the bird is in some danger of extinction, Big Brother’s attempt to “protect” it would be understandable.

Scientists who know the lesser prairie chicken well have learned its numbers rise and fall with the general health of its prairie-grass habitat. Much of its habitat has been in extreme drought for a decade or more, but still, in good years, the bird thrives along with its food and shelter.

In 2014, for example, LPC populations rose 20 percent as rain and snowfall enriched prairie grasses.

The government, however, gave more credence to the poor recent numbers than to any evidence, no matter how well-established, that this, too, would pass.

Using its own evidence, the government last year declared the LPC to be “threatened,” as defined in the Endangered Species Act; that’s only one step less serious than “endangered.”

The government also ruled that a plan assembled by the five bread-basket states that host lesser prairie chickens could effectively manage the bird’s habitat.

It sounds like a compromise until you realize that the “threatened” designation means the feds can step in at the slightest decline in LPC populations and set their own, more Draconian rules.

The five states depend on farming, ranching, oil and gas production and other open-land industries. They can ill afford to give up excessive amounts of production capacity to protect a species that may not need saving.

New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma are far better positioned to find solutions that work for both birds and business than a single-focus bureaucrat in an urban building near the Capitol.

New Mexico State Rep. Dennis Roch, R-Logan, has introduced a bill, modeled after one passed in Kansas last year, that basically says New Mexico’s lesser prairie chickens belong to New Mexico, and we’ll manage them in our own way.

He also has introduced a “memorial” that censures the federal government for declaring the LPC threatened while ignoring valid evidence to the contrary.

The purpose of these measures is chiefly to protest an overreach that does harm without showing that it performs a needed service.

In that protest, we join Rep. Roch.

Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Clovis News Journal’s editorial board, which consists of Publisher Robert Arrowsmith and Editor David Stevens.