STANDING OUR GROUND
Help Stop the Listing of the greater sage-grouse

Dear Member,

For more than 40 years, our nation has continued to lose its ability to produce wealth from millions of acres of private and federal lands all in the name of saving our environment.  

For the past four years, we witnessed a very hostile federal government toward all natural resource producers, but we’ve stood our ground and even beat them back preserving millions of acres of land in several states.  

We did this at American Stewards of Liberty by using coordination at the local level.

Today, we are preparing a long-range offensive plan to save our homeland one community at a time.  We are hoping you will join with us.
 
When we took on the proposed listing of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (DSL), no one believed we could prevent it from being added to the endangered species list.  Not only did we prevent it, we removed it from the candidate list that it had been on since 1993.  

We are now identifying other critical species that are in the environmentalist’s crosshairs and preparing similar strategies we used to prevent the DSL listing. These too can be won, but we need your help.

The first critical listing fight we are taking on is over the Greater Sage Grouse (GSG) that has been described as the next “Spotted Owl,” which shut down the northwest timber industry.  It’s that serious and widespread.  If we don’t stop this listing, we will lose two key natural resource industries – livestock grazing and oil and gas production - in 11 states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, eastern California, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming).

Fortunately, we have been quietly working with Garfield County, Colorado, which has engaged the federal agencies through coordination, but now it’s time to take this strategy to a new level.

We need you NOW more than ever

We can challenge the conservation strategies being put in place by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service for the Greater Sage Grouse today with your help.

We can secure the objective scientific analysis necessary to prove the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s basis for listing is inadequate and does not support an endangered listing, today, if you will help us.
 
We must do these two things now in order to place landowners in a winning position as the Service prepares their final determination to list the sage-grouse as endangered.

Please Help Today

This is not our first fight with the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The first major listing we took on using coordination was won by two Conservation Districts in Arizona where they succeeded in removing cattle as a threat to the Sonoran Desert Tortoise.  

Our second ESA battle was fought in two states over the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard where we not only stopped it from being listed, but removed the species from the list entirely.

Now we face an 11-state challenge as we take on the Greater Sage-Grouse listing.    

The war on rural America and our natural resource industries has been going on far longer than most are aware.  We’ve been at a disadvantage under multiple presidential administrations, yet when we’ve successfully utilized coordination, we’ve won.
 
Our long range plan begins with defeating the endangered listing of the Greater Sage Grouse.  Will you make a contribution today to help us win?  Your support of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000 or more is greatly needed.  Please give the best you can today.  Without your help, we cannot win.

This will not be easy.  In fact, we know we will be met with fierce resistance, but this is a race we must finish for the sake of our families, our land and our nation.  

Will you stand with us?

 

Dan Byfield                                                   
CEO

 

Margaret Byfield
Executive Director

P.S. Click Here to Read the Background on the Sage Grouse Listing