LARAMIE — Wyoming conservation groups have been forced to resort to the courts to protect unique public wildlands in the heart of Wyoming’s Red Desert from oil and gas exploration. Today, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, joined by the Wyoming Wilderness Association and the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club, filed a legal challenge in federal court in Washington, D.C. challenging the Hay Reservoir Geophysical Project. The Federal project is poised to allow massive 62,000 pound “thumper trucks” to drive cross-country across 279 square miles of the Red Desert, including a 10,500 acre portion proposed for wilderness protection.

“There is going to be plenty of oil and gas development in Wyoming, but that isn’t an excuse to drive heavy equipment helter-skelter across some of the Red Desert’s most unique and fragile landscapes” said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Instead of approving the most heavy-handed method, the Bureau of Land Management should be requiring common sense, low-impact techniques that are more compatible with protecting our fragile deserts.”

"This project is part of a recent trend to open up wilderness to heavy-handed oil and gas projects across the West, following the Interior Department's deal with the State of Utah to get rid of the BLM's long-standing policy to establish Wilderness Study Areas for qualifying public lands," added Molvar.

Molvar’s frustration with the Bureau of Land Management is based on the agency’s rejection of an equally effective, lower impact method of exploring for oil and gas resources. This alternative would have involved using helicopters, buggy-mounted drills, and people on foot to avoid scarring the landscape. Although these “shot-hole seismic” methods have been employed elsewhere the Red Desert with success for decades, in the Red Lake Dunes, the agency refused to even consider this alternative

The lower-impact alternative is essential because proposed expansions of the Red Lake Wilderness Study Area lie squarely in the crosshairs of the project. “The Red Lake Dunes are one of the most pristine remaining stretches of the Killpecker Dune Field, the largest active sand dunes in North America,” said Liz Howell of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. “Wyoming citizens want to save special places like the Red Lake Dunes for future generations to enjoy.”

Unfortunately, the people of Wyoming were given little opportunity to voice their concerns. As Patricia Dowd of the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club emphasized, “The Bureau of Land Management increased the size of the project by roughly 44,000 acres without ever asking people how they felt about it. Apparently, only oil and gas companies can have input into how our public lands are managed, but the public can’t.”

“It’s a shame that it’s come to this,” added Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, an attorney with Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit law firm that represents nonprofit conservation groups across the West. “If the federal government had acted responsibly and simply done its job by using common sense tools to protect our public lands, there wouldn’t be any need to resort to the courts.”

The seismic exploration project was proposed by Veritas DGC, Inc. of Houston, Texas.

Photo of the Red Lake Dunes (available for publication). Photo credits should read “Photo courtesy of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.”

Photos of thumper trucks in action. Photo credits should read “Photo courtesy of Greater Yellowstone Coalition.”