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Western hunters, fishermen cry out for responsible management of public land

By melvin

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Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development has issued its Recommendations for Responsible Oil and Gas Development (16-page pdf), a set of thirty-two specific policy recommendations. This document is quoted at length below with permission from SfRED, which wishes to see more public discussion of these issues.

While we presume to lecture those in far more dire circumstances than our own on the very real and pressing need to preserve their forests, water resources, and biodiversity, who will speak up to protect the closest thing we have to our own Serengeti, our own Madagascar?

The  Blues and Greens GOP and Dem parties issue their soundbites, so finely attuned to offend no possible voter, and so general as to be meaningless. The environmental groups, those that are paying attention to anything at all but Wilderness on the Rocks, are up to their ears in litigation just trying to fight off the most outrageous assaults on the tiny scraps of the wild west that remain, hillside by hillside, gully by gully. And when there is any reference made to the change that is urgently needed in the center-right circles that have somehow arrogated the term progressive, the response in comment after comment is screw em, they deserve it. (Thanks for the great display of solidarity.)

The Republican party doesn't care what happens to the west outside a few air-conditioned boardrooms in Denver and the Democrats' interest seems to begin and end with strip-mining it for electoral college votes. We are asked to accept the latter on the theory that the party that has sat on its hands for the last eight years will suddenly spring to life in defence of our natural ecosystems, the primary infrastructure on which all else is built, including everything we refer to as the economy. If you believe that I've got some beachfront property in Pendleton you might be interested in.

Someone must speak up for the west, and someone is. Who better than those that know it best, the hikers, birders, hunters, and fishermen of the back country, those for whom what little remains is not an abstraction, a talking point, or a nice view from the condo but a life, an inheritance, so rapidly disappearing before our eyes? Before it ends, before the breakneck industrialization of every last wild place in the west is complete, let the record at least reflect that we object, few as we may be.

Everyone knows that the pressure is on to increase exploration in the western states even further. But it isn't too late to inject a little sanity into the process, and a little balance, a little consideration of all that is in jeopardy and does not need to be. These Recommendations are as serious, realistic, sober, and detailed a discussion of the state of public land policy in the west as I have ever seen, and I defy anyone to answer them with equal seriousness and depth.

The Recommendations are grouped under the following seven broad headings:

• Reaffirm multiple-use management of federal lands to sustain fish, wildlife and water resources.


• Strengthen the process used to lease public lands and permit oil and gas development for the protection of fish, wildlife and water resources.


• Implement new measures for monitoring the effects of oil and gas development.


• Make comprehensive and thorough mitigation and reclamation of fish, wildlife and water resources a fixture in all leasing and development decisions.


• Remove exemptions from the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts for oil and gas development and strengthen other laws to protect key fish, wildlife and water resources.


• Use current scientific information as the basis for all decisions in energy development that affect our fish, wildlife and water resources.


• Make industry accountable for the costs of oil and gas development on our public lands.

Most of this just sounds like common sense, and many people would probably assume that something very like this set of ideas already guides policy on the extraction of resources from publicly owned land. In fact, their adoption would be a radical departure from the current - unsustainable and frankly insane - practice.

Given considerations of space and the readers' patience, let's take a closer look at just a few of the recommendations grouped under the first heading.
The bulleted points are the Recommendations grouped under this heading. My comments are in italic. Links, bolding, images, video, and any errors are also my additions.

Reaffirm multiple-use management of federal lands to sustain fish, wildlife and water resources.

• Government policy must reflect that oil and gas leases grant a right to develop-and not a property right-that is conditional upon the agency's ability to manage for fish, wildlife, water resources and other multiple uses.

Already this is a departure from current BLM practice. As stated in its own Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Pinedale Resource Management Plan for Public Lands Administered by the Bureau of Land Management Pinedale Field Office Pinedale, Wyoming, February 2007.:

Wildlife habitat would generally only be protected if a mineral commodity is not present for extraction.

Has there ever been a more stark, brutal betrayal of the public trust? And all carried out in broad daylight.

• New leasing must not be allowed until land-use plans older than 10 years have been amended or revised, if necessary, to remove areas from energy development to protect their important fish, wildlife and water resources.
• Planning and development must occur at the appropriate landscape scale, across ecological systems and political jurisdictions that are affected by the proposed action. For example, if mule deer winter in the Pinedale Anticline (BLM-managed land) and summer in the Wyoming and Wind River ranges (Forest Service-managed land), leasing and development that affect any of these areas should require a cumulative analysis of all the areas.

The notion of a cumulative analysis, of looking at the big picture when analyzing impacts on wildlife, is anathema to the Bush administration which always prefers to look at one stretch of road, one destroyed hillside at a time and claim that the effect of that particular action on a species is negligible or at least unlikely by itself to threaten the long term health of a population. That is one reason they have opposed all habitat designation, famously going so far in the marbled murrelet case as to suggest that the birds didn't need any habitat until the USGS's own study put the lie to that malarkey.

More on this later, but we are all familiar with the recent GOP flyover of ANWR which found it devoid of life and therefore not in need of any protection. We almost expect this level of idiocy from the GOP. Does it really need to be pointed out that if you visited Bonneville Dam at just the right time of year and applied this same pre-kindergarten level of understanding, you would conclude that were no fish in the Columbia River? It is no exaggeration at all to say that this is the mindset, this is the level of imbecility currently passed off as wildlife management policy by the Bureau of Land Management.

• Lands that are unsuitable for oil and gas development because of their potential impacts to fish, wildlife, and water resources must be identified and withdrawn. Long-term management objectives must be specified to ensure fish and wildlife habitats and water resources take priority over short-term energy development decisions.
• Impact thresholds and total surface disturbance caps must be established that protect the land's ability to provide for sustainable fish, wildlife and water resources.
• At a minimum, federal oil and gas leasing and subsequent development should be consistent with or stronger than state fish and game agencies' wildlife management plans and objectives.

State protections as a floor not a ceiling. NB: the SfRED is here seeking refuge in (currently nonexistent) federal safeguards. So much for the Sagebrush Rebellion about which there is far too much noise from people who do not appreciate the fact that there is a history here, that we must begin with the understanding that the west views this whole matter of public lands from a different historical perspective. Why? The map at right (click on it to enlarge) is a starting point. Westerners have mistrusted the federal government for very good reason. In addition, it needs to be appreciated how small and therefore voiceless certain populations are in the face of well-funded pr campaigns from the extractive industries.

As an aside, a bit off topic, note as well that the removal of the wolf from the endangered species list was recently overturned (40-page pdf) in large part because of federal reliance on the lame, defective plan of the state of Wyoming as a model; in that case the feds searched high and low to find the state policy with the lowest level of protection and adopted it as the ceiling on protection standards.

• Federal oil and gas leasing and development decisions must abide by the Western Governor's Association Wildlife Corridors Initiative Oil and Gas Working Group Report (19-pge pdf). The report's five major areas of recommendations include (1) federal leasing and well permitting must account for wildlife corridors and crucial habitat; (2) monitoring of impacts to wildlife must be an essential input into decisions; (3) the capacity, both in staff and financial resources, of state and federal governments must be able to plan for and address the impacts of oil and gas production; (4) incentives must be utilized as tools to promote effective actions from industry and private landowners and; (5) tools that help inform decision-making must be maximized.

It is great news that SfRED backs the WGA's Wildlife Corridors Initiative, one of two very positive developments in this area. The other is the fact that the Forest Service, represented by Bridger-Teton National Forest Supervisor Kniffy Hamilton, has approved the Pronghorn Migration Corridor amendment (16-page pdf) to the 1990 BTNF Forest Plan. And this in Wyoming.

(Special hat tip to the folks at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, who sent this along in their newsletter. No one else seemed to consider it newsworthy.)

As illustrated in the Forest Service's map at right, the adoption of the PMC amendment protects 45 miles of the migration corridor that some 200 or more pronghorn use twice a year - as they have for 10,000 years - to get from their summer habitat in Grand Teton National Park to winter feeding ground in the Upper Green River valley and then back again.

Great. That protects half a corridor, the rest being under the control of our friends at BLM, who show no sign of any recovery from their addiction to "categorical exclusions" as a one-size-fits-all philosophy, and private landowners. Still a precedent of sorts is set, even if ENS is a bit over the top with its declaration that this is

the nation's first designated wildlife migration corridor

Hello, Snake River ring a bell? What is the Corps doing with its Fish Passage program and the mountains of money spent annually on propping up some semblance of a salmon run if not maintaining a wildlife corridor, in however lame a fashion? Quibbling aside, it is a point to keep in mind that the term covers a lot of ground, from the great bird migrations to that of toads and salamanders that may only be going half a mile - across the freeway.

The 19,000 emails urging adoption of the amendment may have helped swing the decision, but what was certainly crucial was the landmark paper Connecting the dots: an invariant migration corridor links the Holocene to the present (Biol Lett. 2006 December 22; 2(4): 528-531.), cited by the Forest Service in making its case. I urge everyone to read this short and easily digestible paper, and to take a good look at Berger's map of the eight great historical migration routes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, six already gone.

There are obvious implications here for a warming world. As Joel Berger concluded in Connecting the dots:

Two issues are germane. First, the protection of this migration corridor is more than symbolic. If obstructed, whether by petroleum development, housing or other factors, an entire population from a national park will be eliminated, leaving a conspicuous gap in the function of native predator-prey interactions there. Second, ecological processes are being sacrificed globally, some as a consequence of death by a thousand cuts and others by massive and rapid changes in land use. In an era with few conservation victories, particularly in developed countries, if biological diversity is to be promoted in less-developed countries, we must maintain equal or greater concern for local wildlife conservation by establishing the permanent protection of corridors, whether they are ancient and still functioning or new. Our report of an invariant migratory route suggests that when corridors persist, when they are narrow and when temporal variability in use is low, it should be easier to enact robust conservation measures.

Quickly, two more groups of Recommendations. The first is an essential part of correcting the post-9/11 lunacy foisted off on us.

Remove exemptions from the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts for oil and gas development and strengthen other laws to protect key fish, wildlife and water resources.

• Repeal the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act exemptions for oil and gas development under the 2005 Energy Policy Act and other federal legislation.
• Require public involvement and environmental analysis of the effects of energy development projects within important fish and wildlife habitats. For example, Congress must eliminate the loophole in the 2005 Energy Policy Act that allows the use of categorical exclusions in important fish and wildlife habitats.
• Require oil and gas development on public lands to comply with provisions of the Resource Conservation Recovery Act. The oil and gas industry produces billions of barrels of drilling wastes, product water and other associated wastes during oil and gas operations. The oil and gas industry must properly manage and treat the waste it generates.
• Amend the Mineral Leasing Act to require federal agencies to consider leasing on a semi-annual as opposed to a quarterly basis. This will facilitate judicious consideration of the effects to fish, wildlife and water resources
  and other multiple uses.

And in a sane world, the second would be a no-brainer.

Use current scientific information as the basis for all decisions in energy development that affect our fish, wildlife and water resources.

• Require the use of the best available data, including peer-reviewed research, to develop baseline data for key fish, wildlife and water resources and for the decision processes prior to leasing and development.
• Identify critical information gaps and develop a comprehensive research strategy to address them. As stated above, development decisions must be contingent on both the accomplishment of the research and the acquisition of information and its results.
• Make energy companies responsible for demonstrating their actions will not exceed thresholds or management objectives for fish, wildlife and water resources identified at the planning or project level stage. If actions are proposed that exceed thresholds or objectives, specific mitigation or additional actions must be required and agreements developed prior to authorization and development.

There's a lot more sanity on tap at Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development's website. I urge to you give it a visit and explore their policy ideas more fully, and consider joining me in supporting them.

(I'm talking to you too, Congressman possum. You're busy now, but later?)

Digg it!

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on September 04, 2008 (boomark / email).