Field & Stream Mag Attacks Bush's Environmental Policies

"...the policy has prioritized drilling over other uses on federal lands, while relegating long-standing conservation mandates from the 1960s and '70s to the back burner. For example, in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management has approved over 75 percent of the energy industry's applications for exemptions to work in critical winter range, heretofore closed to protect wildlife--sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorns, in particular (the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 gave agencies the means to close critical habitat). The BLM has also continued to issue drilling leases while in the process of writing new resource management plans that still await public comment. In addition, the Bush administration is working hard to eliminate Wilderness Study areas--set aside for their scenic value as well as their importance to wildlife. Most disturbingly, Congress is now debating a national energy bill that would codify the policy ...

The results of these actions--billed as promoting national energy security--have begun to turn vast tracts of the western United States into industrial landscapes. The winners are the energy companies, which have been able to acquire their leases for as little as $2 per acre. The casualties are big game, upland birds, cold- and warmwater fisheries, the traditional interests of hunters and anglers, and the economic welfare of communities whose livelihoods are based on outdoor recreation and ranching. The Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana--approximately 13 million acres of prairie, escarpments, and mountains--provides the starkest example of how the Bush administration's unbridled energy policy is running roughshod over our public lands. The BLM's final environmental impact statement for the area calls for about 66,000 new coalbed methane (CBM) wells (about 14,000 have already been drilled in Wyoming; several hundred in Montana), 26,000 miles of new roads, and 52,000 miles of new pipelines.