LARAMIE – The BLM has issued a notice that its December auction of oil and gas leases will include a number of parcels in sensitive areas, including the Little Mountain area south of Rock Springs and the Jack Morrow Hills planning area of the northern Red Desert. Both areas are rich in wildlife and cultural resources and are among the state’s most important elk hunting destinations.

“I am adamantly against any more leasing in the Little Mountain area,” said Karl Kronfuss, a Rock Springs hunter who hunts in this area. “There should be a moratorium on leasing and no further actions on drilling until the Bush administration leaves office.”

Data show that over 13 million acres of federally owned minerals are already under lease in Wyoming, and in 2006 over a million acres were leased and over 3,500 permits to drill were issued by the BLM in Wyoming.

“One of the most pro-drilling administrations in history is coming to a close, and the oil and gas industry is doing its best to ensure that it will hold leases to drill in our most sensitive wildlife areas,” said Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “We think this 11th-hour fire sale of our public lands should be put on hold,  because the industry already has many times more lease acreage than it can possibly drill.”

In addition to being a prime elk hunting unit, Little Mountain has been identified as a Bird Habitat Conservation Area under the Intermountain Joint Venture, a collaborative group that includes state and federal officials, scientists, and conservation advocacy groups. BLM is proposing to lease almost 16,000 acres in the Little Mountain area in the forthcoming lease sale.

“It has been over 10 years since a lease was sold in the Jack Morrow Hills area and during that time oil and gas development in Wyoming has not been slowed,” said Bruce Pendery, Public Lands Director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “The Jack Morrow Hills and Little Mountain are too valuable for their wildlife, historical, and recreation resources to be opened to development now when the evidence shows we can have oil and gas without sacrificing areas like these.”

The two leases in the Jack Morrow Hills involve prime sage grouse habitat that are in one of the Core Areas identified for conservation in Governor Freudenthal’s newly adopted sage grouse conservation strategy. The parcels do not contain sufficient stipulations to assure that sage grouse populations in the area would not suffer as a result of development.  The lease parcels also border on the West Sand Dunes Archeological District, a special management area recognized by the BLM for its important ancient artifacts.

“As the evidence continues to mount that the BLM’s current drilling policies are a disaster for sage grouse, the agency continues to pour on more and more leases and thousand-well projects without strengthening the requirements for sage grouse conservation,” observed Molvar. “It’s as if the BLM is actively trying to get the sage grouse listed under the Endangered Species Act by driving it toward extinction.”

Both groups announced their intention to file protests against the leases in Little Mountain and the Jack Morrow Hills. Any other member of the public may file a protest with the BLM Wyoming State Office in Cheyenne, but protests must be received by 4:00 pm on  November 17th.

Contact information:

Karl Kronfuss, Rock Springs area hunter, (307) 382-5411
Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, (307) 742-7978
Bruce Pendery, Public Lands Director, Wyoming Outdoor Council, (435)-752-2111, bruce@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org.  Mr. Pendery will be on vacation October 30 and 31.