The Place
The BLM manages a vast expanse of land stretching across Wyoming known as the Great Divide. This wind-swept landscape contains half of Wyoming's Red Desert. It also holds intricately sculpted badlands, an island mountain range with untouched lodgepole pine forests, and important habitats for rare or sensitive animals such as ferruginous hawks, mountain plovers, elk, and black-footed ferrets.

The Problem
Historically, the BLM has managed the Great Divide almost entirely for oil, gas, and coal extraction - and has done almost nothing to protect its natural wonders. In the Great Divide planning area, crucial elk winter ranges are currently slated for conversion to a huge 3,880 coal-bed methane well field. Elsewhere, oil and gas development is overtaking some of the last wildlands and most sensitive wildlife habitats in the Red Desert. Wilderness-quality lands have recently been identified in Adobe Town, Wild Cow Creek, and the Pedro Mountains, but these special places can easily fall victim to industrial development.

We Have a Chance to Save these Wild Wide-Open Desert Lands
The BLM is now revising its Resource Management Plan for the area, a long-term zoning plan that will designate lands to be protected for recreation and wildlife, and will also determine where oil and gas development is allowed. Further, the revised Plan will determine what kinds of protective measures the BLM will require for future oil and gas development to protect the natural values of the Great Divide.

The revision offers the public a great opportunity. It provides us - as American citizens and owners of these public lands - a chance to save southern Wyoming’s last desert wildlands, its famous open spaces, and its rare and disappearing wildlife.

Please Speak Out for Wild Places and Wildlife at an Upcoming Public Meeting!
The BLM will be holding meetings next week concerning the upcoming plan revision. Please attend a meeting to tell the BLM how much you care about protecting wild nature in Wyoming's Great Divide:

Laramie – Thursday, March 6th, 4-8 p.m., Foster’s Motel/Howard Johnson
Rawlins – Tuesday, March 4th, 3-8 p.m., BLM Office
Rock Springs – Monday, March 3rd, 3-8 p.m., BLM Office
Baggs – Wednesday, March 5th, 4-8 p.m., Baggs Senior Center

At the meeting, please tell the BLM to:

• Protect all remaining wilderness quality lands as Wilderness Study Areas. Such areas include the rugged and scenic Pedro Mountains roadless areas, the rolling hills of Wild Cow Creek roadless area, and the steep badland rims and sagebrush flats of the Citizens’ Proposed Adobe Town Wilderness.
• Don’t drill in environmentally sensitive areas. The BLM should withdraw from leasing or require "No Surface Occupancy" for oil and gas drilling on floodplains, roadless lands, Wilderness Study Areas, crucial elk and deer winter ranges, prairie dog colonies, mountain plover habitat, and within three miles of sage grouse leks or raptor nests.
• Protect the Atlantic Rim. The Atlantic Rim area contains extremely important wildlife habitat, including elk and deer crucial winter range. This is no place for 4,000 new coalbed methane wells.
• Mandate less environmentally damaging types of drilling. Directional drilling and the re-injection of coalbed methane waste water should be required in the Great Divide’s new management plan.
• Manage livestock grazing at ecologically sustainable levels.