News for Immediate Release
June 18, 2008

TRCP Sues Interior Department over Mismanaged Wyoming Energy Project

Multiple violations of federal law drive sportsmen's group to action on Pinedale Anticline, currently targeted for greatly expanded drilling and development

WASHINGTON — The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Department of the Interior over its mishandling of energy development on the Pinedale Anticline natural gas development project in southwestern Wyoming.

The TRCP suit contends that the Bureau of Land Management failed to implement "adaptive environmental management" and mitigation requirements as committed to in the decision documents for the project area, which encompasses approximately 200,000 acres of the Green River Basin in Sublette County, Wyo. The sportsmen's group does not want to halt development in the Pinedale Anticline. The TRCP supports responsible energy development coupled with determined efforts to sustain fish and wildlife resources throughout the course of development activities.

In formulating the plan for development of the Pinedale project eight years ago, the BLM committed itself and industry to processes that the agency concluded were essential to develop the region in an environmentally sensitive manner that complied with BLM obligations under federal law. The TRCP contends that these adaptive environmental management procedures, which attempted to address concerns regarding wildlife, air quality and water quality as they arose, have failed. The BLM violations have resulted in serious damage to wildlife populations in and around the Pinedale Anticline.

"The government points to the Pinedale Anticline project as a model of responsible development," said TRCP President and CEO George Cooper. "But when we actually look at this fractured landscape and the shrinking wildlife populations, we see the effects of a model that is seriously flawed."

The 2000 plan, or "record of decision," for the Pinedale Anticline authorized development in an area that supports substantial populations of sage grouse and contains crucial winter range for one of the state's largest mule deer populations. The latter has declined by nearly half in the project area since development began. These species and other game found in the region offer some of Wyoming's best hunting and fishing opportunities.

The TRCP also contends that the BLM disregard of the adaptive environmental management process violates the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, laws meant to ensure responsible management of federal public lands. The suit notes that BLM decisions regarding development in the Pinedale Anticline consistently ignored current science on the impacts of energy development on populations of mule deer and sage grouse.

"The TRCP supports responsible public-lands energy development — development that is pursued in accordance with the laws conserving fish and wildlife and that ensures citizens' continued access to and enjoyment of our natural resources," said TRCP Senior Vice President Tom Franklin. "The energy industry itself has demonstrated that responsible development is indeed possible. The BLM must uphold its commitment to manage these public resources using the best available science and in the interests of all American citizens, including hunters and anglers."

"We are unwilling to mortgage either the country's big-game species or the greater sage grouse, a game bird so imperiled that it is being considered for inclusion on the federal endangered species list," added Cooper. "The TRCP has been forced to intervene in Pinedale because the BLM has failed outright to responsibly oversee the resources sportsmen treasure. Our inaction would enable the continued mismanagement of Western lands and the loss of our outdoor heritage."

"The Bureau of Land Management must be held to the same standards of accountability as other federal agencies when it comes to following laws and honoring commitments to manage our natural resources," said Steve Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute, TRCP board member and former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The BLM recently proposed expanded development of the Pinedale project, increasing the number of oil and gas wells from 700 to more than 4,000, adding new pipeline corridors and other infrastructure, and authorizing year-round drilling in sensitive game habitats.

"Adaptive management, when properly applied, is an effective tool to address uncertainties in development projects," said Dr. Rollin Sparrowe, a former federal biologist and lifelong hunter who lives near the project site. "But I have witnessed the decline of deer hunting opportunity in the Pinedale herd, and I watched the BLM ignore the relevant scientific data time and time again.

"Mule deer abundance in the project area has been cut in half since development in the Pinedale Anticline began," continued Sparrowe, a TRCP board member and past leader of the Pinedale Anticline Working Group Wildlife Task Group. "Yet, incredibly, the BLM proposal for increased development ‘resets' the baseline for population numbers and actually uses these diminished numbers as the new ‘standard' against which future impacts will be measured.

"The BLM has blatantly disregarded its contract with the public," Sparrowe stated. "As long as the agency can authorize development today, remove protections for wildlife later, and defer responsible wildlife management to a still-more-distant point in time, the value of our public lands — to hunters, anglers and anyone who appreciates the Rocky Mountains — will suffer."

"We need not accept the degradation of our public lands as an unavoidable consequence of energy development," said TRCP Board Chairman James D. Range. "Requiring the BLM to follow legal, multiple-use management approaches will not prevent the extraction of oil and gas in Pinedale or any other place; it will mean extracting those resources only after a plan is established for development that maintains healthy fish and wildlife populations.

"Initiating legal action over this project was not an easy decision for the TRCP," Range concluded. "Yet the Pinedale Anticline, which many call the American Serengeti because of its seasonal and migratory use by wildlife, is an irreplaceable segment of the Rocky Mountain West. How can the TRCP claim to advocate on behalf of American sportsmen if we chose not to act now?"

The TRCP believes that to better balance the concerns of fish and wildlife in the face of accelerating energy development, federal land management agencies must follow the conservation tenets outlined in the FACTS for Fish and Wildlife.