Desert wildlands with sculpted badlands, an island mountain range with untouched lodgepole pine forests, and important habitats for wild horses, ferruginous hawks, mountain plovers, elk, and black-footed ferrets can all be found in the vast acreage

Prehistoric Rim Photo by Biodiversity Conservation Alliance

of BLM lands in Wyoming managed under the Great Divide Plan. Historically, the Bureau of Land Management has placed its management emphasis on oil, gas, and coal extraction in this area, and has done little to protect its natural wonders.

But the BLM is now revising its Resource Management Plan for the area, a long-term zoning plan that will designate lands to be protected for recreation and wildlife, and will also determine where oil and gas development is allowed to take place. Further, the revised Plan will determine what kinds of protective measures the BLM will require of oil and gas producers in the future to protect wildlife and wild places.

In the Great Divide planning area, crucial elk winter ranges are currently slated for conversion to a huge, 3,880-well coalbed methane drilling field. Elsewhere, conventional oil and gas development is overtaking some of the last wildlands and most sensitive wildlife habitats in the Red Desert. Wilderness-quality lands have been identified in Adobe Town and the Pedro Mountains, but they could fall victim to industrial development unless strong public support compels the BLM to give these areas interim protection as Wilderness Study Areas.

Ferris Mountains Photo by Scott Smith

The revision offers the public a great opportunity. It provides us (as American citizens and owners of these wildlands) the chance to demand a balance between oil and gas extraction and natural resources that benefit the public such as wildlife, water, and recreation on public lands in the Great Divide, and to protect its wild places while granting its wildlife and plants the protection they need to survive.

Please respond by April 12, and ask the BLM to protect sensitive landscapes in the Great Divide and make sure its resources are managed in an environmentally responsible manner.

Dear Field Manager Kotter,

I urge you to draft a revised Great Divide Plan that will balance industrial uses of my public lands with the needs of public recreation, water, and desert wildlife.

• Expand Wilderness Study Areas to include the Pedro Mountains, Wild Cow Creek, and all of the Citizens' Proposed Adobe Town Wilderness. The Pedro Mountains are a craggy and completely trackless range with wilderness qualities that have never been adequately protected. The Wild Cow Creek roadless area is a rare desert wildland along the Atlantic Rim and is one of the last remnants of open country in a landscape that is rapidly being overrun by the oil and gas industry. The Adobe Town Citizens' Proposed Wilderness covers thousands of unprotected acres, landscapes of such spectacular scenic value that they are worthy of National Park status. Please grant WSA protection to these beautiful and ecologically sensitive lands.
  
  
• Don't drill in environmentally sensitive areas. Oil and gas development doesn't belong in sensitive wildlife habitats and our last wild landscapes. I want you to withdraw from leasing or require "No Surface Occupancy" for oil and gas drilling on floodplains, roadless lands, Wilderness Study Areas, crucial elk and deer winter ranges, and within two miles of sage grouse leks, raptor nests, and mountain plover habitat.
  
  
• Protect the Atlantic Rim. The Atlantic Rim area contains extremely important wildlife habitat, including elk and deer crucial winter range. Crucial winter ranges in this area should be protected as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, and withdrawn from industrial \uses.
  
  
• Mandate less environmentally damaging types of drilling. President Bush and the Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton have long promised us new drilling technologies and environmentally sensitive methods of oil and gas exploration. The time has come to translate these promises into action. Directional drilling and the re-injection of coalbed methane waste water should be required in the Great Divide's new management plan.
  
  
• Reduce livestock grazing to ecologically sustainable levels. Some parts of the Great Divide area have suffered from overgrazing, particularly the sensitive streamside habitats in the valleys that descend from the slopes of the Sierra Madres. Please reduce stocking levels for lands showing "fair" or "poor" range quality.
  
  
• Inventory and protect all remaining wilderness quality lands. Right now, a handful of large, pristine landscapes exist in the Great Divide that would qualify for protection under the Wilderness Act. Unfortunately, these wildlands have never been assessed by the BLM. The time has come for your agency to take take the initiative and protect all remaining potential wilderness in the Great Divide for future generations.