Setbacks on the Shoshone National Forest

by Caroline Byrd

Our litigation against the Shoshone National Forest’s oil and gas leasing plan ended on January 15, 1999, when the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the Forest Service’s interpretation of its oil and gas leasing regulations was "not plainly erroneous." The Court conceded that, "Although WOC’s interpretation may be the most reasonable, and indeed may even be the interpretation this Court would adopt were it reviewing the regulation de novo, [for the first time] it is not the only reasonable interpretation available." While the Court admitted that, "[t]he land of concern is in genuine danger," it awarded the agency "substantial deference," upholding "the Forest Service’s reading of its admittedly ambiguous regulations."

As we have reported in the last three Frontlines, WOC has opposed the Shoshone National Forest’s (SNF’s) decision to lease 95% of the Forest’s non-wilderness lands since the ink dried on the decision document. And although we are disappointed with the Court’s ruling, its opinion also gives us hope and strong ammunition in our continuing fight against each new lease offered by the SNF.

The Court encourages us, in so many words, to challenge the adequacies of the Forest Service’s compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the time each lease is issued. It clearly requires the SNF to perform site-specific analyses of the environmental impacts of oil and gas leasing before it offers any leases. Because the SNF has not done any site-specific NEPA analyses of the oil and gas leases that it has recently offered in the Dunoir Valley, on Sheridan Pass, and on the flanks of Carter Mountain and the Beartooth Plateau, we feel confident that we will prevail in our individual appeals of these leases.

Therefore, although it would have been much simpler and cleaner to have won our argument that the Forest Service’s whole approach to leasing is wrong, we still think we can win individual lease battles. The Court’s opinion and supporting law clearly requires the SNF to fully understand and explain to the public the implications of opening up some of the finest wildlife habitat and wildlands in Wyoming to petroleum development.
We will continue to protest and appeal each lease as it comes up. And, we’ll let you know how our appeals turn out in upcoming Frontlines.

The Scott Well

The well will sit at the headwaters of Tappan Creek, three miles due south of Ramshorn Peak and within a mile of the Dunoir Roadless Area. Because Hudson Oil holds this lease, it will be next to impossible for the SNF to say no to drilling.

The lease gives Hudson Oil a right to drill, much like your right to live in an apartment once you lease it. And if the Scott Well hits oil or gas, Hudson Oil gets to develop the petroleum resource. The Forest Service will have very little to say about what happens next. It doesn’t matter that 18 radio-collared grizzly bears, wolves, lynx, the Wiggins Fork elk herd, bighorn sheep, moose, deer, northern goshawks and a myriad of other wildlife species use the area. Because the SNF has leased the area for oil and gas, petroleum development will trump all other uses.

An Uphill Battle

This level of intervention is what it took to delay two wells from being drilled on Montana’s magnificent Rocky Mountain Front. For almost two decades, conservationists have fought oil and gas exploration in the Badger-Two Medicine area just south of Glacier National Park. It took endless lawsuits, a moratorium imposed by the Secretary of the Interior, congressional involvement, thousands of letters and countless public meetings to put off drilling two wells on existing leases. The Ramshorn Peak area is just as ecologically important and as scenic as the Badger-Two Medicine. It looks like we may need to mount a similar campaign to prevent the industrialization of the Ramshorn area.

A Ray of Hope