CAN A LITTLE BIRD DEFEAT BIG OIL?

For months the federal government anxiously debated whether to invoke the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to protect the greater sage grouse. In late September, despite intense pressure from environmentalists, the Interior Department caved in to fossil fuel interests and announced that the grouse does not warrant listing. If the greater sage grouse had won endangered species status, large swaths of the West could be closed to oil and gas extraction. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Nation contributor Jimmy Tobias about why the grouse fight is about more than a bird: it's about fossil fuel and the warped logic of extraction at all costs.

Jimmy Tobias is a Nation magazine contributor, whose article "Did the Fish and Wildlife Service Just Doom This Bird to Extinction?," appeared in the September 22 edition of the Nation.