Bozeman News

Guest Column: BLM SILENT AS AGENCY CRITICIZED

Professor Emeritus: Have We ‘Nuked’ Pinedale’s Big Game Herds?

By William Alldredge, Guest Writer, 4-02-07

The federal Bureau of Land Management continues to take a pounding over its greenlighting of additional natural gas drilling in a corner of western Wyoming known for its wildlife, an area that has been compared to Africa’s Serengeti Plain.  Last week, Congress heard concerns expressed by former veteran government biologist Rollin Sparrowe, today a board member with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnershp, over the the effects of natural gas drilling on big game herds in and around the Upper Green River Basin near Pinedale, Wyoming.  Now another wildlife expert, William Alldredge, professor emeritus from Colorado State University (a renowned training ground for government and independent field scientists in the West) weighs in with this guest essay that calls the BLM under further scrutiny.  Will the BLM respond with an explanation for why it justifies further drilling when its own analysis shows that expanding the footprint of drilling will likely displace animals from vital habitat? - Todd Wilkinson

“You are going to do what?” I asked.

The voice on the phone repeated:  “We are planning a sequential detonation of five, 100-kiloton nuclear devices, 3,500 feet underground to stimulate natural gas flow in ‘tight’ formations.”

The voice was that of a representative of El Paso Natural Gas Company who was putting together a team of scientists to conduct an environmental analysis of Project Wagon Wheel, an experiment to be conducted some 20 miles southeast of Pinedale, Wyoming.

To me, a professional wildlife biologist with some training in nuclear technology, “nuclear devices” meant atom bombs and there were going to be five, each one several times larger than those we used during the Second World War.

The environs where the project was slated was affectionately called “the last of the best,” an area known for superb mule deer and pronghorn antelope populations.  I joined the research team and began to analyze potential impacts.

That was in the mid-1970s.

Here we are, 30-plus years later, still trying to extort energy from the gas-bearing formation known as the Pinedale Anticline, or locally the Mesa, an area of approximately 200,000 acres.

I recently analyzed the Bureau of Land Management’s plans for energy development on the Mesa. The Mesa is home to a number of sagebrush-dependent wildlife species and provides crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn. During the last five years, several hundred wells have been developed on the Anticline causing direct loss of more than two percent of these winter ranges.

Although two percent seems like a relatively small number, scientifically credible studies have documented major shifts in mule deer distributions and a 46 percent reduction in deer numbers.  Researchers attribute much of this decline to wellfield activities, direct impacts to the very best habitat and indirect effects from animals avoiding areas near development.

We have less data for pronghorn but studies do indicate that survival rates are lower for pronghorn exposed to energy development activities compared to those not exposed. Based on my own research, I believe impacts to pronghorn are probably as great if not greater than those reported for mule deer.

Yet, even in the face of this evidence, the BLM is proposing to expand drilling activities on crucial winter ranges with an additional 4,000 wells.

If the BLM proceeds with any of the alternatives in their plan, I am gravely concerned about impacts to all of the Mesa’s wildlife and especially to wintering mule deer and pronghorn. Impacts will be evident far beyond the Mesa because we know that deer and pronghorn wintering on the mesa migrate well over a hundred miles and occupy large portions of western Wyoming over the course of a year.

What are the problems? All alternatives presented by the BLM include intense wellfield development; no alternative allows for energy development and conservation of the area’s wildlife populations and habitats.

Furthermore the BLM has underestimated impacts that may result from these alternatives. The ongoing mule deer study not only reported major declines in deer numbers but also indicated that deer avoided areas up to 3 miles from wellfields. The BLM should have applied these site-specific data and disclosed that its proposal will actually sacrifice the majority of crucial big game winter range on the Mesa for many years to come.

I believe a less intense and more moderately paced scenario would allow for both energy development and wildlife conservation, but no such scenario was ever considered.

We are left with the question:  What will become of the mule deer and pronghorn dependent on these crucial winter ranges?

The BLM would have us believe that reclamation will reduce impacts. The fallacy here is that proposed short-term reclamation will not be with essential sagebrush and shrubs, but instead with grasses and forbs that provide little or no nutritional value to wintering deer and pronghorn.

Additionally the BLM asserts that reclamation will occur fairly quickly thus minimizing impacts, when, in fact, a University of Wyoming researcher recently published results indicating that reclamation of these sagebrush communities will take 50 to 120 years. Other ambitious and laudable proposals to mitigate impacts appear in the document but these lack specificity and commitment.

For example, with the proposed 3:1 acres of offsite mitigation, the BLM does not indicate where such mitigation might occur, what might be done and whether or not these improved acreages will be spared from future development. 

Furthermore, nowhere do they indicate how or who will make the decision if mitigation will be required. Deer and pronghorn have depended on Mesa habitats for survival during winter for hundreds of years presumably because they are the best available. What assurances do we have that marginal areas elsewhere can be improved to the point they offset lost habitats and how will animals discover and access these “new and improved” places?  I do not buy into the premise “improve it and they will come.”

The atom bombs slated for Project Wagon Wheel were never detonated, but I remain stunned at the impacts we are currently allowing to be imposed on Mesa wildlife. In the words of one of my more radical colleagues, “we allowed the BLM to nuke it anyway!” I believe our wildlife resources deserve better and I believe that science and technology is available for us to do better. We must demand better.
------------------
Editor’s Note:  William Alldredge, Ph.D., wildlife biologist, is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Wildlife Major in the Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University. Dr. Alldredge today resides near Thermopolis, Wyoming.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.