Duane Hyde ranches at the foot of the Wyoming Range. After 45 years as a warden with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the 70-year-old Wyoming native is spending retirement working his ranch, fishing the Grey’s River and hunting upland game birds. He’s also working to protect some of the wildest and most game-rich country left in the state.
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Wyoming Range © Scott Bosse |
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In May, Hyde and five other western sportsmen met with legislators in Washington, D.C. to promote their “Sportsmen’s Public Lands Energy Agenda.” The visit coincided with and supported the introduction of the Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007, which aims to retool earlier policies crafted to expedite oil and gas development. Introduced by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia, the bill would eliminate the use of categorical exclusions that exempt projects from environmental review, and would no longer hold federal managers to a 30-day limit to process drilling permits.
Not all sportsmen agree with the proposed bill.
“If the bill passed it would definitely curtail energy production, and it would affect consumers in a negative way,” says Andrew Bremner, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States. A bowhunter himself, Bremner says hunting is a big part of his life, and oil and gas is an “industry of sportsmen.” For sportsmen willing to sit down and talk about oil and gas development, he says many issues could be resolved over a cup of coffee. As for protecting places like the Wyoming Range from oil and gas development, “then industry struggles to figure out where we can develop,” Bremner says.
Elk Country for Sale
The Wyoming Range sits on the southern edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—19 million acres of relatively wild country that is still a haven for grizzly bears, wolverines and one of the largest concentrations of elk in the world. The streams in the Wyoming Range harbor four subspecies of native cutthroat trout, and its willow thickets contain half of Wyoming’s moose population. The range is also home to untapped natural gas. From December 2005 to August 2006, four lease sales sold energy exploration rights on 44,600 acres.
Two of the sales were appealed by sportsmen, outfitters and conservation groups and are pending environmental review, while the other two were deferred by the BLM. The sales were delayed because the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled the Forest Service’s Environmental Impact Statement did not adequately safeguard wildlife.
Pete Douglas bought the leases and agrees the environmental review needs to
happen. At 83, Douglas has been in and out of the oil and gas business since the 1950s and owns the small (6 employees) company, Stanley Energy. He, like the groups who brought the appeal, is waiting to see if the area will be available for leasing. If it is, Douglas is willing to compromise. “We’ve suggested that we go out with environmental groups and work together to figure out how to develop in the least intrusive way,” he says. He’s offered to minimize drilling locations using directional drilling and even shuttle his employees into the drill site. “Groups just don’t want anyone drilling there,” Douglas says, and he’s right.
Elk Country Divided
There are just some places you shouldn’t lease and our position is that this is one of those places,” says Chris Wood, Trout Unlimited’s vice president for conservation programs. The vast majority, almost 80 percent of public land, is already leased or open for leasing, he adds. “We have to get a special act of Congress to get that other 20 percent protected.” And if the area is deemed suitable for leasing? Wood says they would strive to work together with Douglas and do what’s best for wildlife. “We’re not just going to take our ball and go home.”
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While mineral rights belong to the BLM, surface rights on the sales are held by the Forest Service, which decides how much land to offer to the BLM to lease. Before the leases were sold, forest officials sat down with the governor’s office and others to discuss leasing in the area, says Mary Cernicek, Forest Service public affairs officer. Out of the 1.7 million acres available for oil and gas leasing, the Forest Service temporarily delayed selling leases until 2008 on all but the 44,600 acres, or 2.6 percent. If the proposed lease sales on all of these 44,600 acres were developed, it would create an almost solid line of development between summer and winter habitat for elk, mule deer and pronghorns (see accompanying map).
This past June, before he lost a battle with leukemia, Senator Craig Thomas, R-Wyoming, planned to introduce legislation that would have blocked future energy leasing in the Wyoming Range. Governor Dave Freudenthal says he hopes the legislation will move forward despite Thomas’ death. Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioners asked Interior Undersecretary Mark Rey to halt new lease sales on the Wyoming Range, and the commissioners are considering trying to buy back existing leases.
That’s an option retired game warden Hyde likes. “We don’t want to force anyone to lose those leases,” he says. As for the investments oil and gas companies have made in exploring some of those leased areas, Hyde says companies should be reimbursed for whatever expenses they have incurred, and the area should be spared from further development.
“The Wyoming Range is a very special place,” says Hyde. “It’s where people go to recreate. I don’t think anyone wants to hunt and camp in an oil field.”