[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 8, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E704]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       ENERGY DEVELOPMENT AND WILDLIFE--PERSPECTIVE FROM WYOMING

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 8, 2003

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, this week the House will be 
debating major legislation to revise our national policies regarding 
energy.
  There are many aspects to that debate. One that must not be 
overlooked is the need to balance energy development on Federal lands 
with the other resources, values, and uses of those lands. Colorado and 
the other Rocky Mountain states have a great stake in that part of the 
debate--something that was well illustrated by a recent article by one 
of our neighbors, Ted Kerasote, entitled ``Wyoming Lives Uneasily with 
Big Game and Big Equipment.''
  For the benefit of our colleagues, I am attaching that article:

                    [From the Writers on the Range]

         Wyoming Lives Uneasily With Big Game and Big Equipment

                           (By Ted Kerasote)

       As meat lockers go, this corner of northwestern Wyoming is 
     one of the prettiest on earth. Behind me, as I sit on this 
     sage-covered bluff, is a great horseshoe of snow-dusted 
     peaks: the Wind Rivers, the Gros Ventres, the Wyoming Range. 
     Ahead lies the Upper Green River Valley: empty, vast and 
     skeined with moving lines of pronghorn antelope.
       Twice each year, these herds move south to their winter 
     range and return north to summer forage. Some of these 
     antelope routinely trek 200 miles to Grand Teton National 
     Park, making their particular migration the longest 
     undertaken by any mammal in the Lower 48.
       In addition to the 32,000 pronghorn out here, there's also 
     48,000 mule deer, some of them moving upwards of a hundred 
     miles to reach the surrounding national forests and their 
     summer haunts. Now and then I see some of the 8,000 elk that 
     seep down from the high country, and there's rarely a morning 
     when, walking across these hills and draws, I don't flush a 
     covey of sage grouse.
       The size of small turkeys, the birds stop my heart when 
     they burst directly from beneath my feet.
       With the quarters of one antelope already on ice, I'm 
     sitting up here and looking for another; in fact, two. Like 
     many people in Wyoming, I haven't eaten farm-raised meat in 
     decades. Three antelope, one elk and a variety of grouse, 
     ducks, and geese feed my family and me, and the friends who 
     help with the packing, from fall to fall. It's one of the 
     blessings of living amid lots of publicly owned land: Food is 
     inexpensive, healthy and fills the soul while it's gathered.
       Or so it's been until recently.
       Today, when I look south, I can see several pickup trucks 
     leaving dust plumes, here and there an ATV skittering through 
     the sage, men erecting aerials on hilltops, and a line of 
     enormous ``thumper trucks,'' big as tanks, rumbling their 
     slow way across the landscape. Overhead, helicopters flash as 
     they tend seismic equipment that read what lies below. The 
     antelope, trying to negotiate this gantlet, rush helter-
     skelter from thumper truck to hovering helicopter and back.
       Natural gas happens to be one of the other blessings of 
     these public lands. The Bureau of Land Management has already 
     permitted 3,090 wells in what's called the Pinedale Resource 
     Area, with many more on the way. In fact, with the Bush 
     administration's push to fast-track the production of 
     domestic energy resources, the BLM has exceeded the number of 
     wells permitted by its 1988 Resource Management Plan. It's 
     now in the midst of writing a new one, which will decide the 
     fate of the Upper Green's wildlife for next 15 to 20 years.
       I suspect that many hunters in the basin (2,600 go after 
     antelope, 7,300 after mule deer, and 7,600 after elk) feel 
     about the way I do: We all use natural gas, but we're not 
     willing to extract it at the expense of the region's 
     wildlife. So what I've been saying to the BLM is this: 
     Protect the land critical to these animals in winter; make it 
     off-limits to anything that might disturb it.
       The animals' transitional habitat needs to be protected as 
     well. That's all the country antelope and deer use for food 
     and rest while on their migrations to and from their summer 
     and winter ranges. Anyone who has spent some time in this 
     basin has probably noticed the passages through which deer 
     and antelope have migrated for millennia, some of them only a 
     half-mile wide. These bottlenecks need to be safeguarded.
       The Bureau of Land Management also needs to recognize that 
     more than energy development is taking place out here. 
     Private lands are being subdivided even as some livestock 
     grazing continues, and an ever-increasing number of 
     recreationists--from hunters and anglers to snowmobilers and 
     ATVers--use roads and trails and everything in between.
       What I'm describing, of course, are cumulative impacts--
     something the federal agency has done a poor job of adding 
     up. The current resource plan, in fact, lacks such an 
     analysis. Most of all, what I keep asking of our federal land 
     managers is caution: Let's find out what's happening to 
     wildlife before we permit more gas well development.
       Today, though, I have nothing left to say. Thumper trucks 
     shaking the ground approach my bluff, and I head back to the 
     car, looking for some undisturbed bit of country. These days 
     in the Upper Green, it is getting harder and harder to find.

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