An Astonishing Land

In the Jack Morrow Hills, a person can climb to the top of ancient volcanic buttes and look out into the horizon across a wide-open landscape, watch a bull elk bugle to potential mates, or catch a glimpse of a ferruginous hawk - a rare bird of prey declining throughout most of the west. A person can explore pristine rainbow-colored badlands for days, walk across giant and continuously shifting sand dunes, or view petroglyphs carved into rock centuries ago. Unfortunately, the BLM is working to industrialize this incredible desert land and change it forever.

The BLM Has Proposed a Slow Death for the Jack Morrow Hills

The agency, under the anti-environmental Bush administration, is pushing to bring hundreds of new oil, gas, and coalbed methane wells into this spectacular area, along with the associated spiderweb of roads, pipelines, powerlines, and compressor stations. Making matters worse, the BLM is refusing to consider the trade or buyout of mineral leases in the area and is ignoring citizens' proposals to create or expand wilderness study areas.

Even if every acre of the Jack Morrow Hills were drilled and all technically recoverable oil and gas deposits were developed, well beyond the scope of this plan, the nation would be supplied with only 9 weeks of natural gas and 39 minutes of oil. The slow death of the Jack Morrow Hills for a few weeks of energy is simply not worth it!

Please Protect the Jack Morrow Hills, for Future Generations and for Today!

Already, thousands of people have spoken out to save this astonishing place. But thousands more are needed to overcome the powerful anti-environmental pressure coming from Washington D.C. We can protect the Jack Morrow Hills. But it will require everyone's help. Please send a letter or email by May 23 to the BLM asking the agency to conserve the wildlands and wildlife of the Jack Morrow Hills.

In your letter, please also ask the BLM to:

• Prohibit all new oil and gas leasing and industrial mining activities;
• Work to trade or buy-out mineral leases in the area;
• Protect all wilderness quality lands as "Wilderness Study Areas" (WSA's) by increasing the size of existing WSA's and establishing new WSA's for lands identified as qualifying by citizens' inventories;
• Restrict motorized vehicles to designated roads; and
• Eliminate livestock grazing from fragile sand dune ponds and other environmentally sensitive areas.

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Letters can be sent to:

Renee Dana
Rock Springs BLM
280 Highway 191 North
Rock Springs, WY 82901

or

renee_dana@blm.gov