Preservation Deal Announced For Wyoming Range

Wyoming outfitters and sportsmen announced Friday that they had come to a private agreement with an energy company looking to develop environmentally sensitive areas of the Wyoming Range on the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The agreement overshadowed the newly released draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), a long anticipated document that outlined possible options for developing 136 wells in the area. The Wyoming Range, located west of Pinedale, has been a contentious issue for conservation and sportsmen’s groups for the better part of a decade now, as energy companies have announced plans to develop leases. Less than 24 hours after the DEIS came out, Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, a statewide advocacy group for hunters and anglers, and the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association, announced that they had reached an agreement with Plains Exploration Company, or PXP, to scale back their project within the Wyoming Range on the Bridger-Teton National Forest. They are now submitting it to the Forest Service for consideration in addition to the alternatives laid out in the DEIS. The agreement included retiring about 28,000 acres leases at no cost and committing $6 million in funding over the life of the project for things such as baseline monitoring of air and water, wildlife mitigation and community benefits. Of that, nearly $4 million would be earmarked specifically for fish and wildlife habitat over the life of the project, and $250,000 would be paid up front for a study on moose in Sublette County. Additionally, surface occupancy would be restricted on about 4,000 acres and more wildlife friendly stipulations would be put in place for areas that did see development...more