Look at the grouse

There used to be a lot more sage grouse in Nevada and our neighboring states to the north and east, 70 years ago. (But not necessarily 170 years ago, interestingly enough.)

Then, in the 1960s, those who seek to drive sheep and cattle ranchers off the land got busy, eliminating both ranchers and state predator-control hunters. Populations of coyote, wildcats, crows and ravens skyrocketed. Those animals are predators of the sage grouse -- particularly their young and their eggs. Surprise: Sage grouse numbers declined.

In 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to recommend the sage grouse for listing as "threatened or endangered," given that there are still close to 100,000 of them, widely scattered out there. But the Idaho-based group known as the Western Watersheds Project sued, arguing that decision was politically motivated.

They're making good headway with U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho, who has ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to review its decision.

Should the green extremists succeed, public land administrators as well as private developers would have to seek permission from federal biologists, guaranteeing "enough grouse remain and habitat is protected" before they could do ... well, anything.

There's "no question" listing the sage grouse would restrict the construction of solar, biomass and geothermal power facilities, "or maybe eliminate them altogether" in the grouse's habitat, which includes most of Northern Nevada and a lot of southern Idaho and Oregon, says Charles Benjamin, director of the Nevada office of Western Resource Advocates and president of Nevadans for Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy -- a less extreme outfit.

That would also "affect wind turbines or transmission lines that are bringing energy from a more distant project," Mr. Benjamin says, since some of the best locations for wind turbines and transmission lines overlap the sagebrush habitat on which the grouse depend.

That doesn't bother Katie Fite, biodiversity director for the Western Watersheds Project, who (hang onto your seats) favors small renewable energy projects next door to power users over big centralized facilities and the transmission lines they require.

Ms. Fite doesn't think much of oil and gas, either, complaining oil and gas exploration in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Montana has "ripped apart habitat that was intact a decade ago. ... If we don't have run-amok oil and gas development, we have wind farms built in sage grouse habitat," she says. "What's going on right now is a scramble to get approval for projects and right of ways before sage grouse do get listed, because these power lines are not compatible with the sage grouse."

Darn those greedy capitalists, trying to make sure our lights and air conditioners and refrigerators will still work when we flip the switch in 2010, despite the green assault from the other direction, urging the replacement of clean, proven, affordable fossil and nuclear technologies with the very technologies whose power Ms. Fite and company now want to make sure we can't use -- wind, solar and geothermal.

And it's all so unnecessary, when we could clearly get all the energy we need to run our modern technological society, including a healthy flow of happy tourists into Nevada via highway and affordable air travel by simply ... what?

What options would the green extreme now leave us? Burning buffalo chips, perhaps. Surely the buffalo-chip-powered airliner is right around the corner.

Or would that endanger the soon-to-be-listed buffalo-chip-loving maggot?