This goofy bird vs. the fossil fuel industry

The sage grouse looks funny. It s also really important. Become a Video Lab member! http://bit.ly/video-lab The mating ritual of the sage grouse is one of nature s most bizarre and alluring performances. It s also very predictable, which makes the bird really easy to count. That s part of why the sage grouse is what s known as an indicator species, meaning that its survival tends to correlate with the health of its entire ecosystem. It s also why the sage grouse was recently the target of one of the largest conservation efforts in US history. And it means that if we lose the sage grouse, there s a good chance we ll have lost a lot of the other 350 plant and animal species that live in the American west, too. A previous version of this video misidentified the bird at 0:58. The error has been corrected. For more on the sage grouse, check out University of California, Davis researcher Gail Patricelli s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa5o4E6x2EU6qQPiEYwCDVw Read about the Audobon Society s conservation efforts around the sage grouse: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/issues/greater-sage-grouse# More on the sage grouse s precarious situation: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/will-the-sage-grouse-win-the-west https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/climate/trump-sage-grouse-oil.html Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com. Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H