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Opening more American lands for oil and gas dev....

Posted by Habibi (Guest) - Saturday, August 7 2004, 19:20:46 (CEST) from - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

Edward Abbey wrote about corruption in the BLM (Bureau of Land Management).... --------------------------------- AUGUST 4, 2004 New BLM Management Plans Would Open More than 80 Percent of Affected Lands to Oil And Gas Development WASHINGTON - August 4 - Newly released plans for more than 6 million acres of environmentally sensitive areas in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico open up more than 80 percent of those lands to oil and gas development, according to a new analysis by The Wilderness Society. The new draft and final plans released by the Bureau of Land Management BLM open 5.4 of the 6.4 million acres (84%) to possible oil and gas drilling, showing an extraordinarily unbalanced bias toward industrial development of these publicly owned lands. “Because they dictate how public lands will be used for decades, these management plans have huge ramifications for the West,” said Suzanne Jones of The Wilderness Society. “By sacrificing wildlife, wildlands, and recreation for oil and gas drilling, they reflect a tremendously unbalanced approach to how our public lands will be used.” Resource management plans, which often take several years to develop, guide how natural resources and activities will be managed during the next 15 to 20 years, spelling out such details as which lands will be open to oil and gas drilling and off-road vehicle use, or for other non-consumptive uses like wildlife habitat and non-motorized recreation. The Wilderness Society analysis covers the latest wave of an expected 80 plans that the BLM will be revising for public lands across the West over the next few years. “Because many land-use plans throughout the West were outdated, the previous administration asked Congress to fund new plans, with the mandate that the plans would balance protection of natural resources with some oil and gas and mineral development,” said The Wilderness Society’s Dave Alberswerth. “Instead, the Bush Administration is using these new plans to open nearly every acre to oil and gas development, except for those areas that Congress has already said must be protected.” The four plans in The Wilderness Society’s analysis include: The July 16 draft land-use plan for Utah’s 2.5 million-acre Price Field Office, which includes the magnificent San Rafael Swell and Book Cliffs of central Utah. The plan opens 1.9 million acres (or 77%) to oil and gas development -- essentially every acre not protected in Wilderness Study Areas. Of more than 1. 5 million acres proposed for wilderness preservation in America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act -- 90% of which the BLM has previously agreed has wilderness characteristics – the plan opens nearly 1 million acres to oil, gas, and mineral development. Areas proposed for wilderness but open to oil and gas leasing under the BLM plan include Desolation Canyon, Turtle Canyon, Mexican Mountain, the San Rafael Reef, and Eagle Canyon. The final resource management plan amendment for New Mexico’s Greater Otero Mesa area, which contains the largest Chihuahuan Desert grassland in the United States and is home to New Mexico’s healthiest population of pronghorn antelope. Despite strong local opposition, the Otero and Sierra Counties Resource Management Plan Amendment, released in May, opened 94 percent of this wild 2-million-acre grassland to full-scale oil and gas development. Earlier in the year, Governor Bill Richardson condemned the BLM’s plans and signed an executive order directing all departments of state government to use their authority to protect Otero Mesa. The draft management plan for Montana’s Dillon Resource Area, which contains world-class trout streams, sage grouse habitat, most pre-European settlement wildlife species except bison, and several Wilderness Study Areas. Despite a BLM proposal to designate a number of new “Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,” no management prescriptions for protecting the values of these areas are proposed in the plan, which was released in mid-April 2004. The plan’s “preferred alternative,” which focuses on a 1.3-million-acre subsurface mineral estate, opens more than 1.2 million of those acres (or more than 90%) to oil and gas development. No drilling has been allowed on BLM lands anywhere in the Dillon Resource Area since 1988. The land-use plan for the northwest corner of Wyoming’s Red Desert (which the BLM calls the “Jack Morrow Hills” area), the largest undeveloped high-elevation desert in the U.S., home to towering buttes, the largest active sand dune system in North America, stunning rainbow-colored landscapes, the nation’s largest desert elk herd, sage grouse, rare plants, and prehistoric rock art. Given the high concentration of wilderness and sensitive wildlife habitat, conservation groups had identified the Jack Morrow Hills area as one of two top priority landscapes in the Red Desert that deserve full protection from industrial uses. Of this 622,000-area, the plan opens 63%, or 393,970 acres, to oil and gas development. The BLM received over 67,000 public comments on this RMP, 99% of which requested that the Jack Morrow Hills be withdrawn from all oil and gas drilling; conservation concerns from local residents also dominated all three Wyoming hearings. Also, in the San Juan Basin, which straddles the Colorado-New Mexico border, the U.S. Forest Service recently issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) with severe, negative implications for the largest and wildest region of the Southern Rockies. Under the Forest Services’ draft EIS, released on June 17, 2004, 36 miles of roads could be carved through the HD Mountains Roadless Area and the area could be dotted by up to 79 coalbed methane well pads. That would amount to a well on every 160 acres, transforming the HD Mountains into an industrial zone for at least the next three decades. Other management plans that are expected soon from the BLM include Colorado’s Roan Plateau, where BLM is threatening to ignore a popular Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal, and four plans in Utah that cover more than 7 million acres. “If places like the Red Desert and Otero Mesa are opened to roads, drill pads, and waste pits, we’ve lost an irreplaceable part of our national heritage,” said Jones. “We will continue to push for balanced management plans that protect our wildlife and our last wild places.” ### --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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