Biodiversity Conservation Alliance

Protecting the Great Divide
Help Protect Wyoming's Great Divide from Excessive Drilling!
Send a Letter Today!

Sample Letter

Add your own comments to the letter Below (Individual Comments are VERY Important.) Then, enter your Name, Email, and Address below then click the 'Send Email' button to send this letter to the BLM.

Dear Field Manager Storzer,

I urge you to adopt the Western Heritage Alternative for a revised Great Divide Plan that will balance industrial uses of my public lands with the needs of public recreation, clean air and water, and desert wildlife.

Protect the Pedro Mountains, Wild Cow Creek, and all of the Citizens' Proposed Adobe Town Wilderness from future drilling. The Pedro Mountains are a craggy and completely trackless range with wilderness qualities that have never been adequately protected. The Wild Cow Creek roadless area is a rare desert wildland along the Atlantic Rim and is one of the last remnants of open country in a landscape that is rapidly being overrun by the oil and gas industry. The Adobe Town Citizens' Proposed Wilderness covers thousands of unprotected acres, landscapes of such spectacular scenic value that they are worthy of National Park status. The Ferris Mountains Addition covers rugged hogbacks in the foothills of the range. Please give strong protection to these beautiful and ecologically sensitive lands, as well as other citizens' proposed wilderness, withdrawing them from future oil and gas leasing.

Move drilling away from sensitive wildlife habitats. Oil and gas development doesn't belong in sensitive habitats and our last wild landscapes. I want you to require "No Surface Occupancy" for oil and gas drilling on crucial big game winter ranges, prairie dog colonies, mountain plover habitat, floodplains, and within three miles of sage grouse leks or one mile of raptor nests. This will allow the mineral resources to be produced with directional drilling while protecting the sensitive lands on the surface.

Mandate lower-impact types of drilling. President Bush and the Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton have long promised us new drilling technologies and environmentally sensitive methods of oil and gas exploration. The time has come to translate these promises into action. Require directional drilling to cluster wells and facilities in a few spots instead of sprawling them across the landscape.

Manage livestock grazing at ecologically sustainable levels. Some parts of the Great Divide area have suffered from overgrazing, particularly the sensitive streamside habitats in the valleys that descend from the slopes of the Sierra Madres. Please reduce stocking levels for lands showing "fair" or "poor" range quality.

Give extra protection to the most important lands. The most important wildlife habitats, like the Powder Rim, the entire Ferris Dunes, the Chain Lakes, and mountain plover nesting areas deserve extra protection as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. These lands should enjoy No Surface Occupancy protection from industrial developments, as should Native American sacred sites and historic sites like the Overland and Cherokee Trails.

Protect air quality in this beautiful area by regulating development that contributes to acid rain and smog in nearby mountains and wilderness areas.

Ensure clean water by prohibiting surface discharge of wastewater produced from coalbed methane drilling in the North Platte River drainage and the Red Desert (instead require underground injection of wastewater), carefully regulating coalbed methane development, and ensuring that "Best Management Practices" for the control of water pollution are mandatory.

Name:

E-mail address:

Address:

State:

Biodiversity Conservation Alliance
P.O. Box 1512, Laramie, WY 82073
(307) 742-7978 - maggie@voiceforthewild.org