Every day that goes by, it seems more and more like Joe Biden has an issue with everything that we as true-blooded Americans stand for. Now, I don’t have anything against the wonderful array of wildlife that dots our landscape. In fact, I enjoy animals such as the lesser prairie chicken. I believe that this bird is a rather nice-looking specimen of the grouse family. My mother (RIP) used to have a job cleaning a Forest Service when I was growing up, and there were all kinds of books there that discussed this excellent example. I’ll even go a step or two further, and I’ll say that this bird is even prettier than that of the greater prairie chicken.
I have to say I’m curious, however, why President Joe Biden seems to want to make this bird a microcosm of his greater war on energy workers.
It does appear that it is almost like a perverse version of Zuzu Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life when she says that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. Except, in this case, it seems that every time that Joe Biden makes a serious gaffe, an energy worker gets laid off from his job.
One of the first things that President Biden did was confuse the Tuskegee Airmen with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Whoops, it looks like you can kiss another pipeline permit goodbye. Biden also referred to the President of South Korea as the Prime Minister, and he referred to the Prime Minister of Israel as the President, and he did all of this in just two days. Well, I guess it’s time that we close down another coal mine. (Oh, but don’t fret, John Kerry just INSISTS that these laid-off gentlemen will be able to get jobs making solar panels lickety split)
Yet, even with the avalanche that is Joe Biden’s gaffes, you still couldn’t make it work if you took all of them away. On the VERY FIRST DAY OF HIS PRESIDENCY, he killed the Keystone XL pipeline, and that killed 10,000 U.S. jobs. He also made a very unrealistic pledge to cut carbon emissions by 2030 in an effort to get the United States to gain re-entry into the Paris agreement. That measure alone could cost millions of jobs, and the energy sector will be the hardest hit. And now, finally, we get to the drama that is the lesser prairie chicken. And again, I’m not denigrating this species of grouse, either.
According to the Washington Post, the Biden Administration has been taking steps to protect the population of this unique bird under the Endangered Species Act, namely the population in New Mexico and Texas. They are not going to list the Northern populations of this species in Kansas and Oklahoma because they deemed their population decline to be not as alarming.
The problem with this is that the population of the Lesser Prairie Chicken overlaps with the Permian Basin, which is an area that is rich in oil and gas. Thus, there is a strong possibility that more energy jobs could be lost. In their move to consider the Lesser Prairie Chicken an endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is specifically blaming the petroleum industry for the loss of their habitat.
“The natural gas and petroleum production will result in both direct and indirect habitat effects for the lesser prairie-chicken,” the report said.
“Such things as well pad construction, access road development, seismic surveys, pipeline corridors, power line construction can all result in loss of habitat for the lesser prairie chickens. When we document the other grouse species, we quickly discover that habitat loss can occur from the immense amount of vertical human structures and noise. This all can negatively influence lesser prairie chicken behavior when they are in the vicinity of oil and gas developments. These activities can also have a negative impact on the reproductive behavior of the lesser prairie chicken.”
Listing this bird as endangered would have an extremely negative impact on energy exploration in the area, and that’s part of the reason why Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma has written a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland earlier this month where he implored her to keep the potential jobs in mind and to avoid listing the bird as endangered. Of course, this administration doesn’t care about jobs, so that letter probably ended up in a waste bin.
“We strongly believe it would be imprudent and harmful to ongoing and unprecedented conservation efforts in our states for the Fish and Wildlife Service to issue what would amount to a premature Endangered Species Act listing proposal for the lesser prairie chicken,” Inhofe wrote in the letter.
They haven’t made a final decision on the status of the lesser prairie chicken yet. The Post has reported that this decision is not going to be made until the end of the year, and it will be after the public has plenty of chances to comment. However, it doesn’t take the smarts of an oil and gas engineer to figure out what decision the Biden Administration is going to make. To be blunt, they are going to side with the tree hugger over the job creators.
Do you want to know another possible reason why they want to choke development in this area? Two words: Donald. Trump. That’s right. They want to do it simply because in some ways this would be a reversal of former President Trump’s decision to open up these public lands for oil and gas drilling such as in the Permian Land Basin. And no, this isn’t a coincidence. Just look at the trends:
“Biden continues to target the energy and environmental policies of President Trump at the rate of at least one per day, according to an analysis from the Washington Post,” the newspaper reported.
Should we be surprised?
If you ask the Biden Administration, they will tell you that the population of the lesser prairie chicken is just as important as HUMAN JOBS in the energy-rich portion of this country. Do they care about the population of the lesser prairie chicken as a whole? No, not necessarily. It doesn’t matter what the ongoing conservation efforts might be; according to a liberal, this bird’s habitat makes it completely off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
If you expect this ultra-liberal administration to seek a balance between the bird’s habitat and the livelihoods of human workers, then you would be sadly mistaken. Just look at their track record: the Keystone XL Pipeline workers will be glad to tell you..
What do you think about the misplaced priorities of the Biden Administration? Feel free to comment on this.