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Conservation Groups File Protest of BLM Plan for Great Divide

A coalition of conservation groups today challenged a BLM management plan for Wyoming's Great Divide. The coalition is encouraging the BLM to adopt the Western Heritage Alternative, a science-based solution allowing continued production of oil and gas resources while protecting key areas like Adobe Town, Powder Rim, and important habitat for sage grouse and big game.

Conservation groups today urged the BLM to protect the Great Divide, filing two separate protests detailing needed improvements to the BLM’s Great Divide plan revision that would govern land management on BLM lands in southeastern Wyoming for the next twenty years. The groups are seeking greater balance between oil and gas development and the conservation of fragile lands and sensitive resources in the area.

“We presented the BLM with the Western Heritage Alternative, a science-based solution that would allow industry to produce the oil and gas resources in this area while protecting key areas like Adobe Town, the Powder Rim, and habitats for sage grouse and big game,” said Erik Molvar, Wildlife Biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “The people of Wyoming support gas development when it’s done responsibly, but they also expect the highest level of protections for our wildlife and special places.  The BLM could have included real protections for sage grouse and required directional drilling, but in the end it failed to take even these most basic steps toward balanced management.”

Beside the shortfalls in protecting special places like Adobe Town and wildlife, the proposed plan also falls short in protecting air quality.  “The plan would allow a six-fold increase in air pollutants with very few mitigation measures required, yet we are already loosing the 100-mile views Wyoming is famous for, so we are challenging those provisions” said Bruce Pendery of the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

A major point of objection in the protests is the lack of protection afforded to sensitive landscapes like the Adobe Town area and the Powder Rim, a critically important habitat for many types of sensitive wildlife.

“The BLM established a special recreation area for Adobe Town, but didn't even bother to provide any protections from industrial use,” said Nada Culver of the Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center. It makes absolutely no sense for the BLM to leave more than half of the area wide open to drilling and mining in the proposed plan,” she added. “None of the BLM’s proposed alternatives in the Final EIS would protect these areas.”

The adequacy of seasonal measures to protect sage grouse and big game habitats also has been raised as a major issue.

“Sage grouse are in real trouble in some parts of their range, and now the BLM is ramping up the drilling in their main stronghold in the heart of Wyoming,” added Molvar. “Scientific studies in the Powder River Basin and the Upper Green River valley show that the seasonal protections from drilling and construction aren’t enough to prevent the grouse from being driven out, yet that’s all that the BLM proposed plan offers. You’d think that the BLM would change course and try some new conservation strategies in the plan now that they know the old standard operating procedures aren’t working.”

The proposed plan would allow the drilling of 8,822 new oil, gas, and coalbed methane wells, plus over 3,000 miles of road construction. “Piling this massive increase of oil and gas wells and roads into an area that has already been stressed by the level of drilling is a recipe for destroying unique places like Adobe Town, harming our big game herds, and increasing air pollution,” said Amy Mall of Natural Resources Defense Council..

“Rare wildlife like the Wyoming pocket gopher, pygmy rabbit, and burrowing owl are disappearing across their nationwide ranges, and yet there was no analysis on the impacts of drilling on these species in the Great Divide area,” remarked Jacob Smith, Executive Director of Center for Native Ecosystems.

Groups protesting the proposed plan included Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Wyoming Outdoor Council, Wyoming Wilderness Association, The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Native Ecosystems, Wyoming Chapter of the Audubon Society, Wild Utah Project, Western Watersheds Project, Californians for Western Wilderness, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and WildEarth Guardians.

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