Media Spotlight Shines on Wyoming

by Mac Blewer

It was a good day for Wyoming and a good day for the Red Desert. No, a great day. Although 4 A.M. had come awfully early, by noon we had already watched a rosy dawn light up Pacific Buttes and the Wind River Mountains, sandhill cranes dancing on the Sweetwater River, prairie falcons and northern harriers soaring above the Great Divide Basin, pronghorn antelope, wild horses and sage grouse.

Storm clouds were gathering along the edge of the Winds and rain was falling on Oregon Buttes. But under the leadership of naturalist John Mionczysnki and a patch of sunlight that seemed to follow us wherever we roamed, we were well on our way into the heart of the Red Desert. We were accompanied by a news team from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that had flown all the way from London to produce a story on Vice President Cheney's home state and the pending Bush-Cheney national energy policy.

A Blizzard of News

If the purpose of the media is to "comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable," as one wag said, then the comfortable - the administration, oil and gas moguls and energy company shareholders - have certainly been badly afflicted over the last few months. European and U.S. print and broadcast journalists have been having a hey-day with President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty, his call for weakening clean air and water standards and his push for a drill-everything energy policy.

The voices of Wyoming conservation activists calling for protection of the spectacular Red Desert, the wildlands of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and the rolling plains of the Powder River Basin have not gone unnoticed. A lot is at stake in Wyoming over the next few years and our own native son, Vice President Cheney, will have a lot to say about the matter.

Besides BBC Newsnight, German Public Television and Die Zeit newspaper have recently broadcast and printed stories about the conflict between environmental protection and oil and gas development in the "next OPEC," as Governor Geringer recently dubbed our fair state.

Here at home, a number of respected newspapers, national magazines and TV networks have covered Wyoming environmental issues in recent weeks, most of them highlighting WOC's efforts to reform coalbed methane development and protect unique natural treasures like the Red Desert. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic Traveler and US News and World Report have published major articles and other publications, including Business Week and Newsday have tracked Wyoming wildlands issues. CNN and FOX News have broadcast dramatic reports. Regional and state newspapers from North Carolina to Washington have also covered our story, and articles may soon be published by Backpacker and Sierra.

Headlines have included "High Stakes on the Prairie," "Gas Rich Desert Will Test Bush Resolve," "Energy, Environment Clash Brews in Wyoming," "Cheney Faces Decision on Wyoming Drilling" and "Die Energierige Nation" ("The Energy-Greedy Nation").

Is the Administration Listening?

Development threats to the Red Desert and our other treasured wild landscapes would not have attracted such national and international news coverage without the hard work of citizen volunteers who have dedicated countless hours to meeting with reporters and film crews and guiding them to special places throughout Wyoming.

It's difficult to say how this flurry of media coverage about Wyoming's dilemma has been received by the Bush Administration. Of course, we hope that it will help stall the administration's plans to roll back environmental laws and regulations to, in the words of the President's executive order, "expedite [agencies'] review of [drilling] permits or take other actions as necessary to accelerate the completion of such projects" in Wyoming and elsewhere in the northern Rockies. The media spotlight will obviously not last forever, but the word is out. Opinion polls on the administration's environmental track record reveal substantial public displeasure and concern.

Wyoming is already America's energy colony. Will we also become America's energy sacrifice zone?

I find BBC News producer Isobel Eaton looking out over the Red Desert's expansive sagebrush flats and dramatic badlands formations. "Isobel, honestly," I ask her, "What do you really think about our battle over energy and the environment in Wyoming?"

She pauses and then turns towards me with a wistful smile. "I think that the pictures will speak for themselves," she replies.