FEDERATION OF WESTERN OUTDOOR CLUBS

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CONSERVATION OF WYOMING'S RED DESERT AND GREAT DIVIDE

Steeped in history and fable, Wyoming's mysterious Red Desert stretches through central and southern Wyoming into northern Colorado.  Also called the "Great American Desert," this eight-million acres lies predominantly on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  The Red Desert and Great Divide harbors some of the most unique resources within the state, including the largest active sand dune system in North America, the Great Divide Basin (the only place in the United States where the Continental Divide splits before rejoining), the nation's largest desert elk herd, the largest migratory game herd in the lower 48 states (a 50,000 animal antelope herd), and over 350 wildlife species.

The area also encompasses numerous wild lands deserving of permanent wilderness protection such as Oregon Buttes, Honeycomb Buttes, Adobe Town, Wild Cow Creek and the Pedro Mountains.  It encompasses scores of Native American cultural sites such as Steamboat Mountain and the White Mountain Petroglyphs, and such historically significant sites as the South Pass Historic Landscape, the Tri-Territorial Marker, the Overland Trail, the Cherokee Trail, the Pony Express Trail and the Oregon, California and Mormon Pioneer Trails.

Two different planning processes are deciding the fate of Wyoming's Red Desert and Great Divide.  The Rock Springs BLM has recently released a final plan for the 620,000 acre Jack Morrow Hills Area of Wyoming's Red Desert that fails to protect the "wild heart of the west."  This inadequate plan occurred even with two record-breaking comment periods during which Americans resoundingly spoke up for protecting this study area, and a conservation directive issued by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.  The Rawlins Draft Resource Management Plan will be released this fall and will govern the management for 12.5 million acres of the Great Divide and southern Red Desert.  What the government decides with these plans will have a profound impact on some of our last wild high desert.

The Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs strongly supports the tenets of the Citizen's Wildlands and Wildlife Alternative for the Jack Morrow Hills and the Western Heritage Alternative for the Great Divide Region.  FWOC objects to the final Jack Morrow Hills Coordinated Activity Plan.  FWOC requests the adoption of a true conservation alternative for the Rawlins Bureau of Land Management Field Office.  Moreover, the Federation recommends that environmentally or culturally sensitive areas be withdrawn from industrial uses and designated as Wilderness Study Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Special Recreation Areas or protected under any available means.  These landscapes include but are not limited to: crucial range for big game, sage grouse and mountain plover, rare plant habitat, and wilderness quality landscapes within the Red Desert and Great Divide.  We are specifically concerned about: the Jack Morrow Hills Study Area, crucial winter range for elk in Atlantic Rim, Adobe Town, Powder Rim, Willow Creek Rim, the Haystacks, East Fork Point, Wild Cow Creek, the Pedro Mountains, the Bennett Mountains, the Ferris Mountains/Sand Dunes, the Prospect Mountains, the Shamrock Hills, Bates Hole/Chalk Mountain, Shirley Basin West and Chain Lakes.

The Federation also asks that, where development of oil, gas or coal bed methane is deemed appropriate, the Bureau of Land Management should require the least damaging types of drilling (e.g., directional drilling and reinjection).  Buying back or trading leases should be used as a tool where sensitive areas are already leased.

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