Our friends at The Wilderness Society (just down the street) this week released their Too Wild to Drill report.  The report features 17 special places including five in Colorado and four in Wyoming.  Their report estimates that at least 23,000 new oil and gas wells are expected in Colorado alone.  In Garfield County, for instance, home to the magnificent Roan Plateau, the annual number of new gas wells has tripled over the past three years.  The mad rush to lease every last acre is problematic enough, but it’s especially inane given that the industry can’t even come close to drilling what it already leases.  The report found that as many of 61% of leased lands in Colorado haven’t yet been drilled despite the BLM’s breakneck pace in selling new leases.  Here at Center for Native Ecosystems we watchdog the BLM’s leasing carefully.  We review every proposed lease and challenge all of those that pose a risk to imperiled plants and wildlife or their habitats, and we’ve had some success – more than 100,000 acres – at persuading the BLM to pull parcels that include key habitat across Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.  We’ve also secured concrete plant and wildlife protections on nearly 1.5 million acres of important habitat.