Director's Message

by Dan Heilig, WOC Director

Open any edition of the official Wyoming Highway Map and locate the Great Seal of the State of Wyoming. The seal obscures a place that few of us have heard of and even fewer know first hand: the Red Desert. Perhaps the cartographers placed the seal here because they assumed that the average tourist on his or her way to Yellowstone probably wouldn’t care to experience what many imagine to be a barren, empty and desolate landscape whose vast scale extends well beyond the limits of human comfort. Perhaps they are right. But for those who take the time to explore, learn and adapt, the Red Desert is full of secrets and riches. Personally, I would like to keep it this way.

After years of delay, the long-awaited plan to protect the Red Desert has finally been released by the Bureau of Land Management. Unfortunately, and predictably, the BLM advocates a series of baby steps when what is most needed is a bold and fundamental change in the agency’s approach to the management of this extraordinary area. Even the BLM’s so-called resource protection alternative, Alternative B, would allow oil and gas development, coal exploration and the construction of new roads and utility lines in this fragile desert area.

Of the 18 million acres of BLM-administered public lands in Wyoming, only a small fraction—just over 577,000 acres managed as wilderness study areas—is closed to oil and gas development. The rest, more than 17 million acres, is available for a range of industrial uses, such as coal and trona mining, oil and gas development, utility lines, hard rock mining and the like.

A prisoner of its resource-exploiting history, the Wyoming BLM is unable, or perhaps more accurately, unwilling, to move beyond its traditional management focus, which values, above all else, the production of commodities. Advocates of other equally important uses mandated by Congress in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, such as protection of air and water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, archeological, scenic and cultural values, recreational opportunities and preserving areas for scientific study and aesthetic appreciation, struggle to be heard.

The 600,000-acre Jack Morrow Hills area analyzed in the BLM’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement comprises but a small fraction of the 4.5 million-acre Red Desert. Yet, as documented in several scientific reports and studies, the Jack Morrow Hills contains an unprecedented wealth of natural values, including a rare desert elk herd, tens of thousands of Pronghorn, the fastest land mammal on the continent, and the Killpecker sand dunes, the largest active dune field in North America.

A testament to their knowledge of geomorphology, Native Americans who passed through this area called the Great Divide Basin—the only place along the entire Continental Divide where it splits in two—"the place where God ran out of mountains." It is also the place where the three territories that came together to form the U.S. join.

By all rights, the Red Desert should be designated a national park or monument. Unfortunately, given the current mood in Congress, such legislation, for the time being, is all but impossible. However, to preserve the option for future generations, the Red Desert should be designated an "area of critical environmental concern." As defined in federal law, ACECs are "areas within the public lands where special management attention is required to protect and prevent irreparable damage to important historic, cultural, or scenic values, fish and wildlife resources or other natural systems or processes." The Secretary of Interior is directed by law to "give priority to the designation and protection of areas of critical environmental concern." It is time he did so.

I urge you to actively participate during the coming months in the BLM’s planning process for the Jack Morrow Hills. Please write or email Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt and BLM Director Tom Fry, and if possible attend the public hearing scheduled later this summer. Urge the strongest possible protection. No less important, take to heart Governor Geringer’s sound advice, offered in the 1997 Wyoming Highway Map, and "savor the mystic beauty of the Red Desert."

We have a tremendous opportunity to accomplish lasting protection for the Red Desert—something, unfortunately, despite their best efforts, our predecessors were unable do. Let’s get the job done!