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Oil and Gas:
Wyoming governor, Environmental groups and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) are urging federal land managers to shield from drilling thousands of acres of scenic badlands that surround a wilderness study area in southern Wyoming.
"Less than half of the wilderness-quality landscapes are currently protected," said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. The area is located about 60 miles southeast of the town of Rock Springs. Companies have proposed drilling about 385 wells on 50,000 acres within the area that the alliance, Friends of the Red Desert and other groups want to see protected. One well has already been drilled. Adobe Town got its name from a 19th-century geologist, who likened its rim to a fortress. Photo courtesy of the Biological Diversity Alliance. "With all the oil and gas development that's going on around the Red Desert, the least the BLM could do is take this spectacular area around Adobe Town and set it aside," Molvar said. A fortified fortress Adobe Town got its name from 19th-century geologist Clarence King, who described the area as similar to "the ruins of a fortified city." Adobe Town is known for woolly rhinoceros fossils, wild horses and such rare wildlife as the ferruginous hawk and mountain plover. The environmental alliance is pushing BLM to withdraw the lands around the WSA from leasing for oil and gas exploration as part of its new resource management plan for the area, which is now in progress. Gov. Freudenthal urged BLM to refrain from issuing new leases for the lands. "[T]he impacts of developing the Adobe Town fringe are such that I cannot advocate additional leasing," the governor wrote in recent comments on the plan. BLM's own inventory identified about 40,000 additional acres that have "some wilderness characteristics," said Steven Hall, a spokesman for the BLM's Wyoming office. He said the groups erroneously included in their WSA proposal a roaded area and a strip of private inholdings; Molvar said the road has been decommissioned and that BLM erred in failing to include the public lands around the inholdings. Hall said the agency cannot withdraw the area around the Adobe Town WSA because most of it is already leased for energy development. "Once a lease is issued, we have an obligation to allow the lease to be developed," Hall said. Furthermore, BLM cannot expand the WSA because of a settlement between the Department of Interior and the state of Utah three years ago that BLM says prevents it from considering new wilderness study-areas nationwide. But the agency can still manage the lands adjacent to the Adobe Town WSA in a way that minimizes disturbance, Hall contends. "We can protect and manage many of the characteristics that people associate with wilderness without designating an area as WSA," Hall said. "We can require wells to be put in areas where they're not as visible, or not near the WSA boundary." Molvar said mitigation is not enough, and he contends that BLM has the authority to prevent energy development on the Adobe Town fringe lands. There were several existing leases on the lands that became the Adobe Town WSA, which BLM phased out as the leases expired, in addition to placing a moratorium on new leases, Molvar said. The same could be done for the wilderness-quality fringe lands. Even though nterior has agreed not to identify any new wilderness-quality lands in its the Utah wilderness settlement, that should not be applied to other states, Molvar said. Hall countered that the existing Adobe Town WSA is sufficient. BLM is responsible for juggling multiple uses, he said, including allowing for motorized recreation and energy development. "We feel that having a wilderness study area of 85,000 acres is the best solution to protecting a really interesting area in Adobe Town, while allowing for other uses," Hall said. Molvar said the alliance is waiting to see the outcome of the administrative process before seeking permanent wilderness protection for the area from Congress. |
Adobe Town, an 85,000-acre expanse of
colorful cliffs, buttes and badlands at the southern end of
the Red Desert have been protected for years as a wilderness
study area (WSA), which means the lands qualify for official
wilderness designation under the 1964 Wilderness Act. But
environmental groups say the Bureau of Land Management
missed another 100,000 acres of adjacent lands that should
also qualify, and they are urging BLM to place them
off-limits to oil and gas development.