Red Desert Dreams

by Mac Blewer

On a recent Saturday evening, I watched the Perseid meteor shower fall over the Pinnacles Wilderness Study Area of the Red Desert. As coyotes yipped and lightning-sparked storm clouds streamed northward, leaving a clear night sky, I could only sit and smile. Smile at the beauty of this rugged landscape, and smile at the hope that a 600,000-acre chunk of this 4.5 million-acre desert can be protected from oil and gas development. Thanks to citizens across Wyoming and the United States, this desert dream just might come true in the next few years.

For better or for worse, the Red Desert issue has become increasingly complicated over the last few months by legal and political entanglements.

In the last Frontline, we reported that Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer petitioned Interior Secretary Gale Norton to rescind former Secretary Babbitt's conservation directive regarding the Red Desert draft management plan.

Since then, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, the Wyoming Mining Association, the Wyoming Farm Bureau and several grazing and oil and gas permittees have filed a similar petition to Secretary Norton stating, incorrectly, that Secretary Babbitt overstepped his legal bounds by issuing the directive. (Although Babbitt's conservation directive did steer the BLM towards drafting a supplemental draft plan with a conservation alternative as a preferred action, in no way did Babbitt's memo direct the agency to end grazing or oil and gas development in the Jack Morrow Hills study area, as many of the petitioners claim.)

In response, attorney Tom Lustig of the National Wildlife Federation, representing WOC and more than 30 ranches, businesses and conservation organizations, asked Secretary Norton not to derail efforts to better protect the Red Desert and to allow a legal response to the anti-conservation petitions. To date, Secretary Norton has not responded in any substantive way to the conservationists' letter.

"Because these are public lands," says Craig Thompson, Rock Springs resident and National Wildlife Federation board member, "the public sentiment that persuaded former Secretary Babbitt to better protect them should continue despite industry petitions to ramp up development."

Although pro- and anti-conservation petitions are still floating in legal limbo, the administration, in a surprising maneuver, has given a slight nod of approval to Babbitt's conservation directive by asking the BLM to develop a supplemental draft plan for the Jack Morrow Hills Area. The BLM has indicated that a "preservation alternative" and a "conservation alternative" will be included in its range of alternatives. However, the administration's decision departs from Babbitt's directive in that the BLM will not identify a preferred action in advance, and will not necessarily choose a conservation alternative as its preferred action, as Babbitt had originally asked.

The BLM is still analyzing the overwhelmingly conservation-oriented deluge of more than 12,000 public comments on its first draft management plan as well as extensive Red Desert wilderness inventories recently completed by Biodiversity Associates. A "scoping" notice inviting public comments should be announced in the next few months.

Although the administration may have done the right thing by allowing the planning process to go forward, conservationists are skeptical, given the current political climate, that it will produce a plan that adequately protects the Red Desert. The BLM is considering several seismic exploration proposals for the Jack Morrow Hills Area, disturbing news, since the planning process is far from over and the BLM must adhere to strict interim guidelines for any such exploration in the contested area. In addition, the BLM recently announced its decision to open up the agency's largest Wilderness Study Area in Wyoming - the 85,000-acre Adobe Town area - to seismic exploration for oil and gas.

We may need to go all the way to Washington, D.C to safeguard the heart of the Red Desert. WOC, Biodiversity Associates, The Wilderness Society and the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club are currently drafting congressional legislation to protect part of the Red Desert as a National Conservation Area or National Recreation Area.

A National Conservation Area designation would protect the Red Desert from new oil and gas leasing and other large-scale development while preserving the desert's key wildlife habitat, cultural and historical resources and unique landscape.

A National Conservation Area designation - which requires congressional approval - would protect the Red Desert from new oil and gas leasing and other large-scale mineral extraction while preserving key wildlife habitat, cultural and historical resources and the unique Red Desert landscape. Under such a proposal, currently designated Wilderness Study Areas and other qualified wildlands in the greater Red Desert area could be permanently protected as wilderness, and existing mineral leases in the area could be traded or bought out by the BLM.

Conservationists are working with elected officials, tribal groups, hunters, ranchers, outdoor enthusiasts, off-road vehicle users and other conservation groups on this issue. Thanks to citizens' and conservation groups' hard work, we do have a fighting chance to protect part of the Red Desert.

As Bart Koehler, Executive Director of The Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center, exhorted supporters at WOC's annual meeting in June, "It's time to saddle up, start on a long, hard ride and work together to keep Wyoming a wild place, today, tomorrow and until the last sunset blazes across our skies."

Well put.