ROADLESS RUNAROUND

Gas Leases Make Inroads into Roadless Areas

By David Frey, 6-20-06

Parts of the White River National Forest and an adjacent forest that are currently designated as roadless areas could be opened up to drilling after an auction of oil and gas leases set for August.

Some environmentalists say that would circumvent a state process designed to make recommendations to the federal government about which roadless areas should receive stiffer protections.

With the state roadless task force set to meet in Glenwood Springs on Wednesday to discuss the White River National Forest, environmentalists are criticizing the decision by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to offer up these parcels before the group's work is done.

"The goal posts are moving," Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, told me for a story in the Aspen Daily News. "It's a moving ball. I think it behooves all of us at the local level to speak strongly and loudly to the fact that we value roadless areas. Roadless areas are more valuable to use roadless than they are all cut up with roads."

At issue are portions of the Mamm Peak roadless area on the White River National Forest, and three roadless areas on the Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre-Gunnison National Forest to the west. The areas lie deep within national forest west of McClure Pass and south of the Interstate 70 corridor, where energy companies have shown renewed interest in recent years.

The Wilderness Workshop plans to ask the BLM to remove the Mamm Creek lease because of the pending state roadless recommendations. It may also seek to remove another lease on the western edge of the Flat Tops. It is part of an area deemed by a coalition of environmental groups to be roadless but never designated so by the Forest Service. Other environmental groups may oppose the other leases.

Some of these areas are places environmentalists believe could be deserving of federal wilderness protection.

"In terms of wildlife abundance and richness, (Mamm Peak) is at the top of the list," Shoemaker said. "It's got some of the best bear habitat in the state."

Shoemaker said he also worries that the leases would cut a swath into a vast roadless complex of some 120,000 acres stretching to Thompson Creek, west of Carbondale.

"It's a big chunk right out of the middle of it," he said.

The Mamm Creek lease includes restrictions that the gas could be extracted only if it can be done off site, without disturbing the land within the 2,500-acre parcel. But those restrictions can be waived by the local Forest Service office, Shoemaker said.

"Given the executive order from the president saying there will be no impediment to energy development, I can see how the industry can argue that ... would be an impediment," he said.

In its waning days, the Clinton administration imposed restrictions that would keep roadless areas free of roads. The Bush administration rescinded those restrictions, but offered to replace some of the limitations if states made specific recommendations.

Gov. Bill Owens convened a task force to consider roadless areas across Colorado to determine if some should be protected. The group will make recommendations to Owens, who will in turn offer a proposal to the Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service. In the meantime, oil and gas leases are being considered under the existing rules, which allow for oil and gas leasing in roadless areas.

"It's like anything else," said Melody Holm, regional program manager for leasable minerals in the Forest Service's regional office in Lakewood. "If we want to change the direction we're heading in, we don't just stop what we're doing right now for a couple years and then pick up where we left off. That's the direction we've gotten."

But for Shoemaker and other roadless advocates, that undermines the process meant to determine if these lands should be kept free of new development.

"This administration has given this assurance: 'Don't worry, we're going to let the public be heard on this,'" he said. "Meanwhile, we're hearing from the Forest Service that we can't put energy development on hold and let this process play itself out. Which is it? It's the one that favors the administration's corporate benefactors."

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