The ILCP Wyoming Range/Red Desert RAVE will be the first RAVE to take place
in
the United States. Members of the ICLP will convene in Jackson, Wyoming on May
19th to stage the RAVE and present the finished work on Friday, May 23,
as a one-month-long exhibition at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.
The exhibit is sponsored by Earthjustice, in partnership with Rich
Clarkson's Photography at the Summit Workshops. Students in the
Conservation Photography Summit Workshop will have the opportunity to
accompany the ILCP photographers on certain legs of the RAVE. Their
work will be featured alongside ILCP images in the final exhibit.
Morgan Heim - Joined the ILCP efforts in Pinedale, Wyoming and has continued to photograph these issues closely.
"My first trip to the Red Desert was last March, and I've gone there a total of 6 times. Today was an 7th trip up to Cheyenne for a land auction, which included parcels within the Red Desert. I credit Robert Glenn Ketchum for inspiring me about the Red Desert. When he visited with the NANPA college scholarship students he first told us about the desert, but it sounded like people were having to concentrate conservation photography efforts on nearby portions of Wyoming. I thought, Here's a hole in the effort where I can help out, put the zoology, photography and environmental journalism training to good use and learn about a particulary unknown part of the West, both unknown to me and lots of others. My first trip confirmed how unique this place was and the complexity of the environmental issues there. I've been hooked ever since.
Joe Riis: joined the ILCP for the WYOMING RAVE! Joe is the recipient of the National Geographic young explorers grant. With
support from the National Geographic Society, The Banff Centre, and the
University of Wyoming; Joe Riis is working on an inspirational public
awareness project focusing on the western Wyoming pronghorn migration.
Specifically the pronghorn that summer in Grand Teton National Park and
traverse the Gros Ventre Mountains to winter in the Upper Green River
Basin and northern edge of the Red Desert.Check out Pronghorn Passage here!
Background: Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley and its wildlife values
The broad, expansive, and sagebrush covered Upper Green River Valley anchors the southern part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This Valley is defined as the area within horseshoe of three mountain ranges in western Wyoming (Wind River, Wyoming, and Gros Ventre Ranges). It contains over one million acres of public lands that are within the Bureau of Land Management’s “Pinedale Resource Management Area.” The Upper Green contains unparalleled wildlife values including:
• Largest block of publicly owned winter range in Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In fact, over 100,000 big game (elk, antelope, and mule deer) migrate down from the mountains and winter here every year.
• key part of habitat for the nation’s largest populations of mule deer and antelope. Impacts to winter range here will have impacts on mule deer and antelope that summer in five different mountain ranges.
• the longest remaining big game migrations in North America outside the Arctic, going on for 7,000 years. This includes the migration of antelope from Grand Teton national park up to 150 miles one way to the heart of Upper Green.
• some of the best habitat and populations left of threatened sage grouse
Background: The Wyoming Range and its values
Located in the Bridger Teton National Forest, the Wyoming Range lies immediately west of the Upper Green River Valley and has tremendous wildlife, recreational, and economic values. It is truly one of Wyoming’s hidden gems. Consider:
Encompassing almost 700,000 acres and stretching 150 miles north to south, it contains:
� Streams with four species of native cutthroat trout, only range in the state that can boast this.
� Some of the best hunting areas and trophy specimen for elk, mule deer, moose.
â�¢ Half the state’s moose population
� Largest roadless area in Bridger Teton national forest and part of largest roadless complex in Wyoming
Background: The Drilling Threat
Besides abundant wildlife, the Upper Green also has extensive natural gas deposits that are being aggressively drilled. Annually over 4 billion dollars worth of natural gas is taken out of the Upper Green. Two fields of “tight sands” natural gas (note: not coal bed methane) are found in the middle of the Valley, south and west of the town of Pinedale = the 40,000 acre Jonah Field and the 200,000 acre Pinedale Anticline Field. The gas reserves here make these two gas fields the second and third largest onshore in the United States. The Jonah field is permitted for 3,000 wells (approximately 700 drilled to date) and the Pinedale Anticline gas field is currently trying to get an expansion plan approved that would allow 4,300 total wells (approximately 600 drilled to date).
Development of these fields can fragment/reduce critical wildlife habitat, disturb wintering wildlife, or cut off migration routes. These are major industrial zones with roads, truck traffic, noise, lights, staging areas, pipeline corridors, compressor stations, etc. Already the Pinedale Anticline has seen a 46% drop in the number of wintering mule deer and most the sage grouse leks in the Jonah field are already abandoned. Besides wildlife impacts, the gas development boom in the Upper Green is causing significant haze impacts, high ozone (public health) problems, water quality concerns, and socio-economic upheaval.
A key place where the fate of the Upper Green River Valley will be determined is with the new “Pinedale Resource Management Plan” (or Pinedale “RMP”) which the BLM has been working to revise over the past six years (over 100,000 Americans commented on the BLM’s Draft Pinedale RMP last spring with over 90% supporting the conservation alternative). When finalized later this year, this landscape level planning document will remain in effect for 15-20 years and decide where new federal leasing will be allowed in the Valley, where it will be prohibited to protect wildlife or other values, and where and what stipulations should be imposed. A coalition of conservation, sportsmen, and other citizen groups are pushing for several key areas in the Valley to be protected in the Final Pinedale RMP, including the entire Wind River Front, Uppermost Green River country, Trappers Point-Cora Butte area, Ryegrass, and Cottonwood areas -- among others.
In the Wyoming Range, 75,000 acres are already under lease in the Range but the only part that has seen production is two small gas fields in the Range’s southeast portion. However, Plains Petroleum is pursuing development of its lease holdings near the Upper Hoback with proposed access from the Merna side. Their “Eagle Prospect” proposal is currently in the middle of a controversial Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process.
Just south of Plains’ proposal, there is another controversial proposal around new leasing. In 2005-2006, the Bridger Teton National Forest under pressure from the Bush Administration, tried to move forward and issue 44,600 acres of new leases in the gateway drainages of the Wyoming Range (Horse, Cottonwood, Beaver, and others). They were stopped by legal protests filed by conservation groups, Wyoming’s Governor, labor unions, outfitters, others that argued that updated analysis and public input was needed. Now, to get around these protests that halted this leasing, the Forest Service is conducted a new EIS on whether to lease these lands or not. At the same time, the “Wyoming Range Legacy Act” has been introduced in the US Senate by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) that would forever withdraw all of the greater Wyoming Range from any new leasing. On May 7 this bill passed the Senate Energy committee.
