LARAME, WY – A decision by the U.S. Department of Interior overturned efforts by the Wyoming Office of the BLM to withhold documents relating to West Nile Virus and coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin. The Wyoming BLM was directed to release the requested documents to Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (BCA), and to waive an exorbitant fee that the BLM had attempted to charge the small conservation group.

In March 2004, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance requested the documents from BLM under the Freedom of Information Act. In April, the Wyoming BLM denied BCA’s request for certain documents pertaining to sage grouse and West Nile Virus and attempted to charge BCA over $900 for other documents. In June, BCA appealed the FOIA denial and fee.

The appeal decision from DC, received by BCA’s attorney today and dated July 15, and was granted in full. Attorneys David Bahr and Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of Western Environmental Law Center are representing BCA.

In a related development, the lead researcher investigating the link between sage grouse deaths and west nile virus has published a report entitled West Nile virus: pending crisis for greater sage-grouse. The document was prepared by U. of Montana professor David Naugle (and others) in Ecology Letters and will appear in the August issue. It is already published on-line at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00631.x/abs/

Select quotations from that publication are pasted here. All are direct quotes:

“Data where sage-grouse were monitored both before WNv [West Nile Virus] (1998–2002) and in 2003 indicate that survival declined an average of 25%, whereas survival did not decline in the UGRB, a site where WNv has not been detected in sage-grouse.

“Surface water sources in arid western landscapes have been created for agricultural irrigation, drinking access for livestock, and oil and gas activities.

“Thus, we have no evidence that sage-grouse are able to survive WNv infection and develop immunity.

“The emergence of WNv further complicates the difficult task of conserving sage-grouse in western North America.

“Regardless, if we are to prevent sage-grouse from going extinct on their remaining range, we must find a way to provide high-quality habitats that support robust, genetically diverse populations capable of withstanding stochastic disease events.”

“We show that WNv reduced later-summer survival an average of 25% in four radio-marked poplations in the western US and Canada.” [These included the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.]

Biologists, conservationists, and concerned citizens have expressed great concern about the impacts to sage grouse and humans from water produced by coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin. Further information is available on BCA’s website at http://www.voiceforthewild.org/blm/news/n19feb04.html.