For Immediate Release
April 14, 2003

LARAMIE-Hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine wildlands in Wyoming's high deserts have been jeopardized by federal efforts to prevent the creation of new wilderness study areas by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Bush administration on Friday threw out the handbook used by federal land managers to decide which areas deserve to be protected as wilderness and prohibited the establishment of new wilderness study areas. The new policy represents a reversal of the practice, established by the Clinton administration, of encouraging the Bureau of Land Management to assess land for its wilderness qualities before allowing it to be developed for other uses. The administration made the changes as part of a settlement to a suit filed last month in Utah. Biodiversity Conservation Alliance is among ten conservation groups who have filed papers to intervene in the lawsuit.

"The Bush Administration and their allies in industry are using the Utah court case to cut a back-room deal to get rid of sound Wilderness inventory guidelines and prevent the BLM from ever establishing new Wilderness Study Areas," said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "This is yet another a case where the plaintiffs and defendants are in cahoots to sneak changes into government regulations without the appropriate public process."

"We are concerned that the proposed settlement violates federal law," added Kelly Matheson, a staff attorney for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. "According to the BLM's most basic legal mandates, the agency is required to keep an ongoing inventory of all its resources, including wilderness, and give these resources appropriate protection."

The result could open pristine wildlands, such as the Pinnacles, Wild Cow Creek, and parts of Adobe Town to mining, oil and gas drilling, and off-road vehicle use, without even considering the wilderness qualities that would be destroyed. "By precluding the BLM from even considering those wilderness values, Americans are robbed of their right to have a say in how this land is used," said Molvar.

Conservationists charge that this action is just the latest in a broad and far-reaching effort by an anti-wilderness faction within the Interior Department to stamp out further wilderness protection in favor of the interests of powerful extractive industries. As part of this back room hand-out to special interests such as mining and oil and gas corporations and off-road vehicle manufacturers, BLM's Wilderness Inventory Handbook, which requires that wilderness be considered on a level playing field with other multiple uses on public lands, would be abolished, and the BLM would prevent the designation of new Wilderness Study Areas as long-term Resource Management Plans are revised.

Over the years, Wyoming conservation groups have inventoried 1.5 million acres of wilderness-quality BLM land. Approximately 900,000 acres of unprotected wilderness are placed at risk by this new policy. Although many of the citizen inventories have yet to receive an official response, the BLM has already conceded that 50,000 acres of inventoried land deserve to be wilderness, including the Pinnacles in the Jack Morrow Hills area as well as substantial additions to the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area.

"This is a terrible blow to the thousands of Wyoming citizens who love our deserts and want to see them protected," said Liz Howell, Director of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. "The Red Desert hearings last week in Rock Springs and Lander were demonstrations of that love, where 5 out of every 6 speakers were in favor of keeping drilling out of wilderness-quality lands."