LARAMIE – Conservation groups today expressed strong concerns about the BLM’s Cherokee West seismic project, which is slated to impact over 130 square miles in the southern Red Desert, including wildlands in Adobe Town, the Kinney Rim, and the Powder Rim. The environmental assessment for this project was made available today on the web.

“Instead of allowing the oil industry to do this exploration the quick and dirty way, the BLM ought to require responsible methods that won’t destroy these fragile landscapes,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “The receiver lines will be laid by helicopter, which is a good thing, but the vibrations will be done using 64,000-pound thumper trucks, the highest-impact seismic method available.”

Under the project, the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area would be protected by requirements that exploration occur by helicopter and on foot. But the same protections would not apply to adjacent lands that the BLM has identified as possessing wilderness qualities, which the agency has promised to consider protecting through the Great Divide plan revision. In these wilderness lands, the BLM’s Proposed Action would allow the thumper trucks to roll in formations of four vehicles across.

“Thumper trucks don’t belong in wilderness,” said Liz Howell of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. “Desert lands are so fragile that the BLM won’t even let the public drive a pickup off-road, and yet for this project they’re proposing to allow 32-ton thumper trucks to run roughshod over some of the Red Desert’s most sensitive landscapes,”

In addition to the southern quarter of Adobe Town, the project is likely to impact sensitive wildlife along the Powder Rim (an area proposed as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern under the Great Divide plan revision). Also at risk are seven Native American rock art sites, the historic Cherokee Trail, roadless lands along the Kinney Rim, and an old cabin site believed to be a hideout used by Butch Cassidy and his Powder Wash Gang in the late 1800s.

Conservation groups have been seeking lower-impact alternatives that would achieve the goals of the project with a fraction of the impact. Cutting-edge methods like passive seismic tomography have been used to map oil and gas deposits in the Amazon rainforest using the Earth’s natural tremors. These methods only require geophone receiver lines (with not explosives or thumper trucks), and have almost no impact on the land. Even older shot-hole methods could accomplish the project’s goals with a fraction of the impacts. “It makes no sense to use these heavy-handed thumper trucks in one of the Red Desert’s most pristine areas when lower-impact methods achieve exactly the same results,” added Molvar.

The BLM will be taking public comments on the proposed project until August 12th.