The Encampment Valley, south of Saratoga, is a scenic, pastoral landscape flanked on either side by the mountains of the Medicine Bow National Forest. Watered by bluie-ribbon trout streams like the North Platte and Encampment Rivers, this area also provides important winter range for elk, mule deer, and bighorn sheep, as well as breeding and nesting habitat for a resident population of sage grouse. Long believed to be devoid of oil and gas deposits, the BLM has recently announced a proposal to auction off over 26,000 acres of mineral leases, some under public land while others are "split estate" minerals underlying private lands.

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Oil and gas development in this area would have the following negative consequences:

• It would degrade or eliminate sage grouse habitat, further harming a species that is already on the brink of survival;
• It would likely cause abandonment of key winter ranges and migration corridors used by big game species, displacing them to less favorable habitats and ultimately resulting in population declines;
• It would threaten water quality not just for municipal water supplies by also for blue-ribbon stretches of trout water that are key to the outfitting and guiding economy of the area.

The BLM has never adequately studied how oil and gas development should be planned in this area, if indeed it should occur at all. Nonetheless, the agency is charging ahead with selling off a property right to develop the minerals in this spectacular valley. BCA is joining unions, sportsmen groups, other conservation groups, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, and local governments in calling on the BLM to remove these parcels from the December Lease Sale. Click here to view the BCA Lease Protest. The next step will be for local communities to develop a long-range plan on how (or if) oil and gas development should be allowed in the Upper North Platte Valley in the years ahead.

News releases:
BLM Takes Oil and Gas Leases in the Saratoga Valley Off the Table (December 3, 2007)