The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) in late November appealed a judge's decision to uphold the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) energy development plan in the Upper Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming. In September, the court ruled against the TRCP's argument that the BLM failed to implement effective "adaptive environmental management" (AEM) and mitigation requirements in its oil and gas development plan for the Pinedale Anticline.

In ruling against the suit, U.S. District Court Judge, Richard Leon, wrote that the BLM "was not required [under the Federal Land Policy Management Act] to adopt the practices best suited to protecting wildlife, but instead to balance the protection of wildlife with the nation's immediate and long-term need for energy resources and the lessees' right to extract natural gas?. Though the BLM may not have selected procedures and methods best suited for the protection of wildlife, its determination that unnecessary and undue degradation would not result from the measures it ultimately did select is not arbitrary and capricious."

However, the TRCP cited the importance of the Upper Green River to wildlife and as a hunting and fishing destination. While the 200,000-acre area has what is estimated to be the third largest natural gas reserve in the nation, it also provides crucial winter range for one of the state's largest mule deer herds, as well as important sage-grouse habitat.

Since development began in the area in 2000, there has been approximately 1,857 acres of direct habitat loss to mule deer habitat winter range, even without considering the impact of pipeline routes. Recent studies of mule deer in the Pinedale Anticline, commissioned by the BLM, show that mule deer abundance was 60 percent lower in 2009 than in 2001, based on annual estimates. The research also found that mule deer continue to avoid well pads even after nearly 10 years of well development, suggesting that the deer are not habituating to the landscape and activity disturbances.

"Why should we care about Pinedale, Wyoming?" said TRCP President and CEO Whit Fosburgh. "In short, because this project, touted as a paragon of public lands energy development, instead exemplifies a broken, out-of-balance management system. The court's ruling essentially states that BLM can concoct a management plan, fail to implement that plan, rewrite the plan, and have the plan affirmed by a federal court, despite its failure to live up to the BLM's contract with the American people." (jas)