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BCA CHALLENGES ADOBE TOWN DRILLING
A flag marks the spot of a well to be
drilled inside the Adobe Town
proposed wilderness.
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Today, BCA is launching a legal challenge against a two-well drilling project in the Adobe Town citizens' proposed wilderness. Called the 'Desolation Road' project, it would permit the drilling of two wells deep in the heart of an area that the Bureau of Land Management has determined to possess wilderness character, just north of the currently protected Wilderness Study Area and at the base of The Haystacks.
The BLM state office initially issued a Stay on the project until the Rock Springs field manager could assess impacts to wilderness qualities. But the Rock Springs office claimed that the naturalness and solitude of this area had magically disappeared since 2002, even though there has been no industrial activity there, making the Desolation Road wells and access road the first intrusion into an area that is one of the wildest and most pristine in the state.
BCA is joined by the NRDC, The Wilderness Society, and Defenders of Wildlife in the challenge, which will be decided by the Interior Board of Land Appeals, an administrative law court within the Department of Interior.
BCA PROTESTS PULL 59,863 MORE ACRES FROM DRILLING!
As federal officials decided to close down new offshore drilling areas along the Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Wyoming BLM quietly pared back the large-scale oil and gas leases across the state by issuing fewer of the oil and gas leases that were sold in sensitive areas under the Bush administration.
A hiker rests in the Pinnacles citizen's
proposed wilderness, an area spared from
the February 2009 oil and gas lease
auction thanks to a BCA protest.
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As a direct result of BCA lease protests, 59,863 additional acres of leases sold at auction in late 2008 and early 2009 will not be handed over to the oil industry! These "deferrals" mean that these lands will be spared at least until land-use plans are completed, many of which appear headed for stricter rules that could withdraw lands from development over the long term.
This figure does not include 7,925 acres pulled by BLM prior to the February 2009 lease auction in the Honeycomb Buttes and Pinnacles citizens' proposed wildernesses in the Jack Morrow Hills in response to the protest written by BCA and signed by the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
The BLM also pulled some 18,418 acres of leases to safeguard Class I and Class II Waters, apparently of its own volition.
This batch of BCA's protests, which were joined variously by the Center for Native Ecosystems (CNE), Wyoming Outdoor Council (WOC), Clark Resource Council, and Wyoming Wilderness Association, contributed to all of the lease deferrals excepts the Class I and II Water parcels. A number of other groups, including the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), Western Resource Advocates (representing Audubon), the WOC, Trout Unlimited, the CNE and the TRCP, submitted protests of their own, which contributed to some of the lease deferrals. Congratulations to all!
SAGE GROUSE MANAGEMENT PLAN GOING FORWARD
In October of 2009, BCA Director Erik Molvar met with high-ranking officials in the Department of the Interior in Washington on the subject of sage grouse conservation. One of the ideas he pitched was a "Programmatic" Sage Grouse Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which would automatically amend BLM land-use plans rangewide, installing stronger protections for the bird. After all, the Bush administration had issued similar Programmatic Statements for Oil Shale and Tar Sands development, Wind Energy, and Transmission Corridors. Why not a Programmatic EIS for sage grouse conservation?
Two male sage grouse strut or "dance" in competition for mates. Wyoming is the sage grouse's strong-hold state, but the bird's future is up in the air. In March of 2010 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated it "Warranted but Precluded" under the Endangered Species Act.
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A year later, the BLM is working on just that. The plan will cover six Field Offices in Wyoming, and is likely to incorporate Governor Freudenthal's Core Area concept as well as earlier BLM policy changes that strengthened sage grouse protection.
Most of the conservation measures in the new EIS will allow greater levels of industrial use than have been shown to be safe for the grouse in scientific studies from the Wyoming gas patch. Still, they are better than before. In addition, each Field Office will be expected to identify several possible sage grouse areas designated to prevent future oil and gas leasing, which is quite strong.
Significantly, no-leasing areas already proposed include the northern third of the Jack Morrow Hills and adjacent South Pass area, as well as a separate chunk west of the Kinney Rim, each covering several hundred thousand acres of key habitat in the greater Red Desert.
The Core Area measures can be seen as a glass half full or half empty, but either way they're half measures. At the same time, such measures are stronger than what the sage grouse is getting today, and the withdrawal of vast expanses of habitat from future leasing would be a huge victory for the grouse.
FAREWELL TO SARAH EGOLF
Sarah Egolf
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Long-time BCA Development Director Sarah Egolf is departing BCA next January to pursue a position with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers in Colorado. Sarah has contributed a great deal of energy and a wealth of ideas to BCA over the years, and we will miss her cheerful presence in the office. We wish Sarah the best of success with her new endeavors, and we hope you will, too.
Darcy Gardiner, BCA's Business Manager, has several decades of fundraising experience with Wyoming Public Radio, the Wyoming Humanities Council and the UW Art Museum, so Sarah will be leaving BCA in good hands.
Please feel free to send Sarah an email wishing her well!
Biodiversity Conservation Alliance
P.O. Box 1512, Laramie, WY 82073
(307) 742-7978 - darcy@voiceforthewild.org
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