A coalition of anglers and hunters is calling foul against a federal plan to sell oil and gas leases in Utah's west desert next month, accusing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management of rushing to open land to drilling without fully evaluating potential harm to trout and other wildlife.
The BLM is trying to finish an environmental analysis that would justify selling leases on more than 5,100 acres near Fillmore during its quarterly auction, scheduled for March 24.
But Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, whose members persuaded the BLM to defer the leases from its contentious Dec. 19 auction, says the agency's preliminary finding that drilling wouldn't have significant impacts on the region's wildlife or lands is unfounded.
The objections surfaced soon after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar nullified the December sale of leases on 77 parcels covering 103,000 acres near national parks and wilderness areas in Utah. Salazar on Wednesday said the Interior Department would review BLM's six recently issued multimillion-dollar resource-management plans after a federal judge said three of them were inadequate.
The public lands encompassed by the Fillmore field office -- at 4.7 million acres, the largest BLM region in the state-- include the Deep Creek Mountains in west-central Utah near Great Basin National Park. The region is home to mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, sage grouse and a fragile population of native Bonneville cutthroat trout, once thought extinct.
Members of Trout Unlimited, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and four other organizations say the wildlife deserves a full environmental impact study, not just the environmental assessment and preliminary finding of no significant impact that the BLM has issued -- especially since the agency is relying on a 20-year-old management plan for its findings.
Six other field offices this past fall spent more than $25 million to update their plans, critics note, and the Fillmore office should do the same before offering leases.
Kent Hoffman, BLM's deputy state director in Utah, defended the abbreviated study, saying the analysis isn't necessarily less adequate than a full environmental impact statement. That the Fillmore field office hasn't updated its resource-management plan is a matter of funding and priority, Hoffman said. Besides, the Fillmore region isn't considered resource-rich like eastern Utah's Uinta Basin, he said.
The Wolverine oil strike and one other in an area, which has been drilled for more than 50 years, are the only confirmed finds in the Fillmore region. "This is a highly exploratory area," Hoffman said. If there is a new discovery, he added, the agency would conduct further environmental studies.
