Wyoming's Red Desert At Risk from Geophysical Project

LARAMIE, Wyoming, May 25, 2004 (ENS) - Wyoming conservation groups filed suit last week to protect unique public wildlands in the heart of Wyoming's Red Desert from oil and gas exploration.

The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, joined by the Wyoming Wilderness Association and the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club, filed a legal challenge in federal court in Washington, DC challenging the Hay Reservoir Geophysical Project.

The federal project is poised to allow massive 62,000 pound "thumper trucks" to drive cross-country across 279 square miles of the Red Desert, including a 10,500 acre portion proposed for wilderness protection.

"There is going to be plenty of oil and gas development in Wyoming, but that is not an excuse to drive heavy equipment helter-skelter across some of the Red Desert's most unique and fragile landscapes," said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

"Instead of approving the most heavy-handed method, the Bureau of Land Management should be requiring common sense, low impact techniques that are more compatible with protecting our fragile deserts," Molvar said.

The organizations say the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rejected an equally effective, lower impact method of exploring for oil and gas resources.

That alternative would have involved using helicopters, buggy-mounted drills, and people on foot to avoid scarring the landscape.

Although these "shot-hole seismic" methods have been employed elsewhere the Red Desert with success for decades, in the Red Lake Dunes, the agency refused to even consider this alternative, Molvar said.

"This project is part of a recent trend to open up wilderness to heavy-handed oil and gas projects across the West, following the Interior Department's deal with the State of Utah to get rid of the BLM's long-standing policy to establish Wilderness Study Areas for qualifying public lands," Molvar added.

The organizations criticize the BLM for not giving members of the public ample opportunity to voice their concerns.

"The Bureau of Land Management increased the size of the project by roughly 44,000 acres without ever asking people how they felt about it," said Patricia Dowd of the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club complained. "Apparently, only oil and gas companies can have input into how our public lands are managed, but the public can not."