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January 14, 2008

Groups Petition BLM to Extend Great Divide
Final EIS Period

RAWLINS – Conservation groups formally petitioned the Bureau of Land Management to extend the deadline for response to its Final EIS to revise the Great Divide long-term land-use plan, which will be re-named the Rawlins Resource Management Plan. The plan governs management of 4.6 million acres of public lands and split-estate federal minerals beneath private ranchlands, and includes the eastern half of the Red Desert. Key issues in the plan includes sage grouse conservation, protection of the Adobe Town area and other high-profile and important recreation and natural landscapes, and protecting big game habitat and migration corridors.

“The Final EIS runs over 2,000 pages in four volumes, and it’s way too much information to expect the public to digest and respond to in only 30 days,” said Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “This plan encompasses some of Wyoming’s hottest conservation issues, from Adobe Town to sage grouse, and this protest period represents the public’s last chance to influence the plan and the BLM’s last chance to get it right before the plan is finalized.”

The protest period for the Final EIS is moving ahead at the same time as comment periods for other major oil and gas proposals elsewhere in the state and nationally.

“With comments periods currently running on the Pinedale Anticline and a massive increase in proposed drilling in the Hoback basin near Bondurant, it is completely unreasonable for the BLM to pile on yet another major document that requires the public to respond on virtually the same deadline,” said Bruce Pendery of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “It’s almost like the BLM is trying to discourage public participation by swamping everyone with a flood of oil and gas projects.”  Pendery noted that the BLM and Department of Energy’s West-wide Energy Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Statement is currently out for public review with a comment deadline of February 14, which is close to the February 4 deadline for protesting the Rawlins RMP and the February 11 deadline for comments on the Pinedale Anticline supplemental environmental impact statement.

In addition to BCA and WOC, groups petitioning the BLM to extend the protest period for 30 to 90 days included Wyoming Wilderness Association, Powder River Basin Resource Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, Californians for Western Wilderness, SkyTruth, EcoFlight, and Western Resource Advocates.