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Diverse groups protest BLM lease sale near Pinedale
BY APRIL REESE, LAND LETTER, 02/01/07
The Bureau of Land Management plan to offer 28 parcels of Wyoming lands in an upcoming oil and gas lease sale has been hit with complaints from a broad array of interests. Environmental activists, hunting groups and landowners alike claim the lease sales might result in harm to mule deer habitat.
In response, BLM has withdrawn several of the disputed properties but will go ahead with the sale of the 20 remaining parcels, officials said this week.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on Jan. 25 filed a protest over eight of the parcels, arguing in the document that "leasing would irretrievably and unlawfully commit these priceless Wyoming wildlands to oil and gas development."
Some of the parcels overlap with crucial winter range and migration corridors for mule deer, said Rollie Sparrowe of TRCP, a coalition of conservation and hunting and fishing groups. Mule deer are considered an important game species by the state.
"The BLM has failed to properly consider the likely impacts from development if these leases are sold and developed in the manner that is currently being used," said Sparrowe, who lives in the Pinedale area.
The Upper Green River Valley Coalition also protested the sale, for many of the same reasons.
"These parcels are crossed with crucial ranges for mule deer and sage grouse," said Linda Baker of the coalition, adding that BLM had that information before it offered the parcels for leasing. "It seems the only thing that determines whether BLM offers a parcel is whether a company nominates it."
One of the parcels protested by the coalition was next to DeSmet Monument, the location of the first mass held in Wyoming, Baker said.
Most of the protested parcels are located west of Pinedale in an area known as the Ryegrass. Others are along the divide separating the Green and Snake river basins.
BLM should suspend such lease sales until it has conducted a full habitat assessment of the area and completes the revision of its resource management plan, a process that is now under way, Baker said.
Landowner Blane Woodfin, who owns property on Seven Mile Ranch, which is adjacent to one of the parcels, also protested the lease sale. Calling the area a "special place," Woodfin urged BLM in a Jan. 13 letter to reconsider offering the parcel for lease. "There is too much at stake to allow this to happen," he said. "There is too much to be lost that can never be replaced."
On Jan. 25, BLM announced it had decided to pull eight parcels from the sale, including some of the protested parcels. The parcels were removed because they contain "important wildlife habitat," encompass floodplains, or have historical or cultural significance, according to an agency release announcing the withdrawal. BLM is working with state wildlife officials to determine if there are migration routes within the Ryegrass area that need to be avoided, BLM said.
Bill Lanning, associate field manager for BLM's Pinedale office, said under the agency's current resource management plan, almost all areas are open for leasing, and therefore there will be potential overlap between leases and wildlife habitat.
"Most everything we have in our field office is some kind of wildlife habitat," Lanning said. The new resource management plan is scheduled to be issued in about two weeks, he said -- about a week after the lease sale.
Lanning referred questions about why the eight parcels had been withdrawn, and about whether the lease sale would be in tune with the agency's new management plan, to the state office, which did not return calls by press time.
Energy development in the nearby Pinedale Anticline, an important migration corridor, has also been a point of contention between conservation groups and the agency.
The Feb. 6 lease sale, which will put a total of about 6,000 acres up for bid, comes as BLM considers a plan to allow energy companies year-round access to the anticline, a move TRCP and other groups say would further stress mule deer as well as pronghorn (Land Letter, Dec. 21, 2006).
The proposal would triple the number of wells on the anticline but would concentrate development in particular areas, which energy companies say would provide more open space for wildlife.
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