LARAMIE – Conservation groups today condemned a BLM proposal to unleash 32-ton “thumper trucks” across a 105,000-acre stretch of the southern Red Desert, including parts of Adobe Town proposed wilderness and the Powder Rim proposed Area of Critical Environmental Concern. The project, known as the Cherokee 3D Seismic Survey, appears headed to be the most contentious oil and gas exploration project in the state’s history. The use of the 64,000-pound thumper trucks (euphemistically known as “vibroseis buggies”), as proposed in this project, leaves long-term scars on the land that resemble furrows in the sagebrush.

“Adobe Town and the Powder Rim are some of the Red Desert’s most sensitive and pristine landscapes, and this proposal to turn loose the highest-impact form of exploration known to man on the eve of the Great Divide plan revision is reckless and irresponsible,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “This project is a crime against the public and an unforgivable assault on some of the Red Desert’s last best places.”

The project encompasses the southern quarter of Adobe Town, including parts of the current Wilderness Study Area as well as lands proposed for the protection of wilderness qualities under one of the four alternatives in the Great Divide Resource Management Plan revision. Wilderness quality lands to be impacted by this proposal include the southern end of the Skull Creek Rim and neighboring badlands along the foot of the Powder Rim.

“Adobe Town is an extremely fragile landscape, with easily damaged badlands of national park quality,” said Liz Howell of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. “It is absolutely criminal for the BLM to allow these monster trucks into Wyoming’s most spectacular and pristine desert landscape.”

The project would also impact the western end of the Powder Rim, perhaps the most outstanding and sensitive wildlife habitat in the Great Divide planning area. Not only does the Powder Rim have overlapping crucial winter ranges for elk, deer, and pronghorn, but it also cloaked in a rare juniper woodland that is home to nine rare songbirds as well as the Gibben’s beardtongue, a rare wildflower in the penstemon family that is found in only four spots in Wyoming. The Powder Rim is also a key wildlife linkage between the rich and diverse foothill habitats of the Atlantic Rim and the trackless expanses of the southwestern Red Desert. The Powder Rim has been proposed by citizens and conservation groups as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern as the Great Divide land-use plan is rewritten.

“With the exceptional wildlife and ecosystem values of the Powder Rim, the BLM could not have picked a worse place for a thumper truck project,” said Jacob Smith, Director of Center for Native Ecosystems. “There are plenty of places in southern Wyoming where oil and gas development would be fine as long as it’s done responsibly. But the Powder Rim and Adobe Town are so special that they deserves to remain in a natural state, unimpaired by the scars of oil and gas development.”

Photos of the Powder Rim that would be impacted by the project are available www.voiceforthewild.org/general/photoalbum/greatdivide/gd_photo4.html

Additional photos of impacted Adobe Town areas and thumper trucks available on request. Photo credits should read “photo courtesy of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.”