Muleshoe NWR expansion: Murdered by Arrington and USFWS

Shock me on the latter.

The Texas Monthly provides more information about how US Fish and Wildlife Service is a quisling pseudoenvironmental organization, with a detailed blow-by-blow of its total cave-in on what had been a planned massive expansion of Muleshoe NWR out in the Panhandle:

Outdoor enthusiasts are drawn to its remote beauty, where rugged swaths of wildflowers and mesquite trees shelter the elusive pronghorn antelope and the lesser prairie chicken.

Oy.

And part of this ties to the lesser prairie chicken, discussed here last week:

[Recently a] federal judge in Texas ruled there had been “serious error” in the agency’s classification of the lesser prairie chicken’s endangered status, temporarily removing Endangered Species Act protections for the bird in the state—a culmination of a Republican-backed effort that began in 2023 when Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a suit to overturn the listing.

Shock me that Kenny Boy was involved.

The key pusher on the ground was Lubbock Congresscritter Jodey Arrington. He had gotten a bill to shut down the expansion out of expansion just before USFWS caved.

As for this?

“Rep. Arrington’s opposition to Muleshoe was mostly, if not entirely, based in misinformation. The issue about the idea that landowners are somehow going to be forced or pressured to sell their land is simply not true,” says Nathan Marcy, a senior policy analyst at the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife.

It misreads Arrington. Information and misinformation isn't his concern. Nor is apparent hypocrisy of supporting state parks expansion. Instead, GOP wingnuts fellate the oil and gas industry, and will never, at the state level, allow a state park to even think about infringing on it. Beyond that, they hate the feds in general, until they start sucking off the federal teat.

It misreads USFWS as well.

That said, California Congresscritter Jared Huffman, known on these pages before, is a rank hypocrite for calling out Arrington on that bill as long as he continues to fight to keep cows INSIDE Point Reyes.