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Bringing Balance to Oil and Gas Development in the West

Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development is represented by businesses, organizations, and individuals who are working to strike a balance between energy development and conservation in the West. We have set our sights on reforming the laws, regulations, and policies that ensure respect for the traditions of the West. We will fight to protect the rights of sportsmen to hunt and fish on public lands, now and for generations to come. Find out more.

Recent News from the Range

Hunting and Fishing Group Backs Bill to Protect Water

June 9, 2009

Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development calls on oil and gas industry to disclose chemicals they use


WASHINGTON – Sportsmen applauded legislation introduced today to regulate a controversial energy industry drilling practice suspected of contaminating ground water.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. and Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., would require the energy industry to reveal the chemical contents of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” fluids used to fill fissures in rock formations and force oil or natural gas from wells.

The legislation would end energy industry exemptions under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and help protect drinking water – on the surface and underground – that  humans and wildlife depend on.

“If they won’t tell us what chemicals they’re putting in our water, it makes you wonder if they have something to hide,” said Brad Powell, energy policy director for Trout Unlimited. Trout Unlimited is a partner in Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development with the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and scores of other organizations, businesses and individual hunters and anglers nationwide.

“We’re already seeing the impacts on people from tainted groundwater in the gas fields of Colorado and Wyoming,” Powell said. “There’s no telling how the industry’s chemicals are affecting our fish and game populations.

“The Safe Drinking Water Act is one of our country’s bedrock environmental laws and it was enacted to protect one of our fundamental natural resources,” Powell said. “Requiring the energy industry to meet the same water-quality standards as other businesses isn’t asking too much.”

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Contact: Brad Powell, Trout Unlimited, 928-300-5451, BPowell@tu.org

 

BLM defers leasing Little Mountain parcel

June 7, 2009

GREEN RIVER -- Bureau of Land Management officials have deferred leasing a parcel for oil and gas exploration around Little Mountain in southwest Wyoming until a joint state/federal wildlife management strategy can be crafted for the area.

The 1,700-acre parcel near Little Mountain was pulled from a BLM oil and gas lease sale Tuesday morning, according to Julie Weaver, BLM fluid minerals branch chief.

The parcel was deferred until state and federal managers review and determine a strategy for development in the Little Mountain ecosystem, Weaver said Friday.

Read more...

 

Salazar Taking Stewardship Seriously

Our new Interior Secretary is bringing balance back to fossil fuel leasing and development on federal lands. After eight years of having their own way, energy industry leaders don't like his balanced approach, but most Americans, the owners of our public land, welcome the change.

May 3, 2009
NewWest.net
By GREGORY MOORE

To hear the public relations arm of the oil and gas industry describe it, Ken Salazar’s first few months on the job as Secretary of the Interior have been a disaster.But if you ask the country’s sportsmen and women, you’ll find they emphatically disagree.

Since his confirmation by Congress in January, Salazar has restored some commonsense and responsibility to the process by which America’s public lands are loaned to industry for oil and gas extraction. Hunters and anglers in states that hold the majority of BLM and Forest Service lands are applauding the more balanced approach taken by Salazar’s Department of the Interior in considering the detrimental effects irresponsible development can have on fish and game habitat.

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Sportsmen Coalition Angered That BLM Plans Another Oil and Gas Lease in the Greater Little Mountain Area

May 18, 2009

ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – To preserve the natural splendor, abundant wildlife and recreational opportunities around Little Mountain, a sportsmen coalition filed protests today with the Bureau of Land Management to stop another proposed oil and gas lease in the popular recreational area of southwestern Wyoming.

The 1,753-acre greater Little Mountain parcel is one of 84 parcels statewide – totaling more than 67,000 acres – that the BLM Wyoming State Office plans to include on the June 2, 2009 auction block. The greater Little Mountain parcel, on the east side of Potter Mountain near Brooks Draw and Elk Butte, is situated in a crucial mule deer range and a sage-grouse core area and is adjacent to an elk migration corridor.

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Victory for New Mexico's Otero Mesa

April 29, 2009

On April 28th, 2009 a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to uphold the National Environmental Policy Act in it's 2005 Resource Management Plan for Otero Mesa. BLM put together it's plan in response to requests for oil and gas leases on Otero Mesa after Harvey E. Yates Co. struck natural gas there in 1997.

In it's decision, the appeals court said that the BLM failed to consider an alternative that would have put the area off limits to drilling and did not adequately consider potential impacts of drilling on the area's diverse plant and animal life and on a large underground water source.

Since the plan was released in 2005, it has been met with staunch opposition from Governor Bill Richardson, other state agencies and environmental groups, who finally sued BLM over the plan.

The court ruled that the BLM must complete a more detailed environmental review, including considering totally closing Otero Mesa to development, showing more evidence for conclusions about impacts on the area's aquifer and appropriately weighing oil and gas development against other possible uses, including conservation.

Read more...
 
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