The "Pointless Lease Restrictions"
The Powder River Sportsmen's Club has operated the Virtue Flat Shooting Range on a BLM lease since 1968.
In 2023, BLM added three new "conservation" restrictions to the PRSC lease. The new restrictions are pointless because they do not achieve any conservation objective.
PRSC is a conservation organization with a long history of conservation work. The new lease restrictions are not about conservation. They are about control and government overreach.
These are the restrictions:
1 - VFSR must close for the first and last two hours of each day from March through June if an occupied sage grouse lek is located within four miles of the shooting range.
Our response: Loud All Day, Silent Mornings & Evenings (LADSME) won't accomplish anything, especially at the PRSC shooting range which is located on a busy highway. Sage grouse remain nears leks and nests all day.Fremgen AL, Rota CT, Hansen CP, Rumble MA, Gamo RS, Millspaugh JJ. Male greater sage-grouse
movements among leks. Journal of Wildlife Management. 2017;81:498-508., Connelly JW, Reese KP, Schroeder MA. Monitoring of Greater Sage-grouse Habitats and Populations.
College of Natural Resources Experiment Station Bulletin 80. 2003, University of Idaho, Moscow, USA., Wann GT, Coates PS, Prochazka BG, Severson JP, Monroe AP, Aldridge CL. Assessing lek
attendance of male greater sage‐grouse using fine‐resolution GPS data: Implications for population
monitoring of lek mating grouse. Population Ecology. 2019;61(2): 183-197., Dudko JE, Coates PS, Delehanty DJ. Movements of female sage grouse Centrocercus urophasianus
during incubation recess. Ibis. 2019; 161:222–229., Retherford DW. Movements and Space-Use of Female Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus
urophasianus) During Nesting and Breeding Seasons. 2020; Theses and Dissertations - 9305.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/9305 If shooting range noise drives away sage grouse in the mornings and evenings, it will drive away sage grouse during the day. LADSME is not an intelligent or evidence-based strategy for enticing human-wary wildlife to resume productive use of any human-disturbed habitat. Furthermore, sage grouse consistently and productively used mating leks 1.5 miles from the shooting range for 50 years, which means that morning and evening shooting range noise did not harm them for 50 years, and it won't harm them now.
2 - VFSR must close for the first and last two hours of each day from March through June if sound from the shooting range can be measured at 10 decibels or more above ambient sound at the perimeter of any occupied lek.
Our response: On a calm morning, a 160dB gunshot might be measured at 10dB-above-ambient for milesUse any free online Inverse Square Law sound attenuation calculator. In perfect conditions, a 160dB sound wave must travel 373 miles before dropping to 50dB, which would be 10dB above an assumed 40dB ambient. On a perfect still morning in Virtue Flat, you may be able to measure a VFSR gunshot at 60dB at a distance of two miles. Our complaints: That gunshot won't bother sage grouse. And every morning is different. And no one is measuring. No one has ever measured in Virtue Flat, especially while monitoring wildlife reactions. The highway is almost certainly louder. We don't want to be subject to restrictions like this because the Baker PAC is huge. If BLM wants to restore habitat, don't focus on trying to restore every inch of habitat next to a highway recreational zone with three recreational facilities. Instead, focus efforts on the surrounding, empty 200,000 acres of PAC where something good can actually be accomplished., if you try long enough. Just keep measuring until you get one above 10. At a distance of a mile, gun shots do not bother people or animals. In most conditions, you can't hear a gunshot two miles away. Every year for 50 years, sage grouse were happily breeding 1.5 miles from the shooting range. In that time, the combined sound of the highway, shooting range, and OHV area did not drive sage grouse away or interfere with their mating activities.
3 - VFSR must close if 5 or 6 deer wander within 2 or 3 miles of the shooting range.
Our response: The May 19, 2018 Baker City Herald describes ODFW's attempt to explain to the Baker City Council the problems caused by killing or trapping deer in people's front yards. This meeting happened because Baker City was infested with deer, and still is today. Some residents complain about damage to gardens, and risk from rutting bucks or defensive does. Other residents feed the deer doughnuts and try to pet them. Baker City is a haven for deer. If the 24-hour noise and activity of a small city attracts an infestation of deer, how is it that a shooting range six miles away must close every time a few deer wander by? In 50 years, no one has ever suggested that the Virtue Flat Shooting Range is harmful to deer.
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PRSC is already conducting sage grouse conservation measures: noxious weed control, elimination of predator roosts and subsidies, publishing evidence pertaining to West Nile Virus, and planning displacement of invasive annual grasses with native bunch grasses.
PRSC members are conservationists.
Obviously we do not oppose sage grouse or deer conservation measures, but we do oppose any conservation measure that doesn't accomplish anything.
If you are interested in every detail of the conflict between PRSC and BLM, read the appeal docs HERE.