WOC Challenges Environmentally Destructive Drilling on Sensitive Public Lands

by Meredith Taylor

With the majority of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem open to oil and gas drilling, WOC is focusing its efforts on protecting sensitive undeveloped public lands that remain in the ecosystem and elsewhere in Wyoming.

Bridger-Teton National Forest

As we wrote in the winter 2001 issue of Frontline, after almost four years, numerous public hearings and more than 13,000 comments from concerned citizens like you, the Bridger-Teton National Forest (B-T) has proposed to safeguard 370,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat, blue-ribbon trout streams and popular back-country recreation areas from oil and gas development. The strong public support for the B-T's proposed "no lease" alternative on four management areas from Togwotee and Union Passes to the Upper Green and Hoback Basins showed that about 98% of respondents called for a ban on leasing.

WOC continues to be involved in the public process as we await the B-T's final decision, expected this summer. WOC is concerned the Bush Administration may well attempt to reverse Forest Supervisor Kniffy Hamilton's anticipated decision to approve the "no lease" alternative. We fully support the B-T's recommendation, as it reflects broad public support for protecting this important area's "sense of place." A copy of the proposal can be found at: www.fs.fed.us/btnf/ oil&gas/oil&gas.htm

Green River Basin

As detailed in an article on page 12, WOC is actively challenging efforts by multi-national energy companies to escalate development in the Pinedale Anticline Project Area west of the Wind River Range. The pristine lakes of this Class I watershed are already vulnerable to acid rain produced by pollutants from existing development in the area. As many as 900 new natural gas wells are proposed in 700 locations on 200,000 acres on the crest of the Pinedale Mesa.

Additional developments in the Green River Basin include the Jonah II, Big Piney/LaBarge, Moxa Arch, Fontenelle and, the daddy of 'em all, the 3,000-well Continental Divide Project. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is managing these areas for a single use-industrial development-with its web of roads, drill rigs, pumps, treatment plants and pipelines to extract and exploit sub-surface resources. Mandated multiple use and surface-resource protection of wildlife habitat, back-country recreation and air and water quality on these public lands are largely being ignored.

Industry estimates that as many as 15,000 new wells will be drilled in southwest Wyoming in the coming decade. Such industrial development will inevitably cause long-term damage to the natural wealth of this sensitive high-desert ecosystem. By approving development projects on such a huge scale, the BLM is also perpetuating Wyoming's history of boom-and-bust economies that ultimately threaten the stability of local communities.

Brent Creek

The Forest Service is currently preparing its Environmental Assessment and processing an application for permit to drill (APD) in the Brent Creek area, northwest of Dubois.

In an attempt to protect this area of key wildlife habitat, WOC, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Dubois Wildlife Association recently asked the BLM and the Forest Service to review their oil and gas leasing decisions. Our 60-day-notice letter focuses on six leases encompassing 2,080 acres of public lands leased for oil and gas at the southern end of the Absaroka Mountains.

Brent Creek has been identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an important natural wildlife corridor, year-round habitat for grizzlies, a calving ground for the free-ranging Wiggins Fork elk herd and key habitat for three other species protected by the Endangered Species Act: gray wolves, lynx and northern goshawks.

Brent Creek also provides critical low-elevation habitat where grizzlies, after emerging from their winter dens, can feed on winter-killed elk and lush vegetation, when their high-elevation habitat is still covered in snow. Between 1988 and 1996, at least 18 radio-collared grizzly bears used the Brent Creek area.

The Forest Service is evaluating an oil company's application to drill on one of the challenged leases in the area, and promises an analysis of the proposed well (Scott Well #2) this summer.

Our letter to the BLM and the Forest Service notes that the agencies have violated the Endangered Species Act by issuing oil and gas leases in occupied grizzly bear habitat without analyzing and avoiding the adverse impacts of oil and gas drilling on the threatened bears.

The same groups filed suit last April against the proposed issuance of three oil and gas leases in grizzly bear habitat within the Shoshone National Forest. In response, the BLM withdrew the leases, thereby avoiding a court decision on the legality of the agency's oil and gas leasing program. However, numerous oil and gas leases remain in critical wildlife habitat in and near the Shoshone National Forest.

Brent Creek is only one of many areas throughout the Northern Rockies facing threats from a renewed rush to develop potential oil and gas reserves. The fate of those lands remains uncertain. The Bush Administration has promised to open public lands such as Brent Creek to oil exploration, which will undoubtedly influence the Forest Service's final leasing decision.