Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Otero Mesa on 'Too Wild to Drill' list

Otero Mesa, 12 million acres of wild grasslands primarily under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, appears on a list of 12 places deemed "too wild to drill," by The Wilderness Society. Society spokesman Jennifer Dickson said a new report titled, "Too Wild to Drill," includes the mesa as well as Chaco Canyon, also in New Mexico. "When Americans think of the great outdoors, we often envision wild places and open spaces, towering trees, rushing waterfalls and jagged peaks," she said. "We don't envision mazes of pipelines and roads, acre-wide well pads and drilling rigs. "While these sensitive lands are being threatened by oil and gas development, the oil and gas industry also leased 38 million acres of other federal lands, an area the size of the state of Florida. Millions more acres of private land also are being used for oil and gas development. Conservation must be put on equal ground with oil and gas development and ensuring the protection of the wild places highlighted in the report is one place to start." A proper balance between drilling and conservation already was achieved in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, where the BLM protects more than 11 million acres of land critical for birds and wildlife, while keeping more than 70 percent of oil and gas deposits available to drilling, she said. "Recent polling shows that more than three quarters of Americans support protecting wild places that are 'too special to drill,'" Dickson said. "We also spent more than $646 billion on outdoor recreation annually, economic activity that depends on vibrant open spaces for hiking, camping, hunting fishing and other uses of our land." Other places on the list are the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, Arches National Park and Desolation Canyon in Utah, Greater Dinosaur Region and Thompson Divide in Colorado, George Washington National Forest in Virginia, Los Padres National Forest in California, North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana, and The Red Desert and the Wyoming Range in Wyoming...more

1 comment:

Monica - Drill Rigs said...

I agree. It's very unfortunate when wildlife is not taken into consideration enough. More efforts need to be made to make sure the environment is impacted as little as possible. Thank you for sharing this article.