Wildlife Biologists speak out against BLM & gas drilling
Dr. Rollin Sparrow and Dr. William Alldredge
by Pinedale Online!
April 2, 2007
Two wildlife biologists have written articles recently strongly criticizing the Bureau of Land Management for their energy development push, which they assert is negatively impacting wildlife in Wyoming. The articles appeared on the Missoula, Montana-based environmental website, “NewWest-The Voice of the Rocky Mountains”.
Dr. Rollin D. Sparrowe has 40 years of experience as a Wildlife Biologist. He worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s and 1980s on wildlife management programs in the Rocky Mountains. He left that government agency to work as a founding board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a coalition of hunting and angling groups, according to New West. Sparrowe also worked for two years as Chairman of the Wildlife Task Group of the Pinedale Anticline Working Group (PAWG) monitoring wildlife needs for the Pinedale Anticline gas drilling projects on BLM lands south of Pinedale. Sparrowe resides in Daniel.
Dr. Sparrowe wrote an article on March 27, 2007, expressing his concerns about the pace of energy development near Pinedale and impacts on wildlife species in the area. In his essay, “As Deer Decline, Energy Development Comes Under Fire”, Sparrowe writes, “The recent release of research findings from the fifth year of vital studies of mule deer use of the Mesa on the Pinedale Anticline has again produced a customary "spin-doctoring" that has characterized the debate over Wyoming's wildlife affected by energy development.”
“It seems clear that some part of energy development has to be scale back or deer and deer hunters will lose even more than they already have. And yet, the signs are not good—leasing to drill on migration and summer ranges threats the REST of the annual deer habitat,” Sparrowe wrote.
For the entire article by Dr. Sparrowe, click on this story link: As Deer Decline, Energy Development Comes Under Fire
The second article appeared on NewWest on Monday, April 2, written by William Alldredge, PhD. Alldredge is a wildlife biologist who lives in Thermopolis, Wyoming. He is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Wildlife Major in the Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University.
Alldredge wrote an article entitled, “Have We ‘Nuked’ Pinedale’s Big Game Herds?”, drawing a comparison of the energy boom rush of the 1970s which led to Project Wagon Wheel, a proposal in the mid-1970s to detonate a 100-kiloton nuclear devices, 3,500 feet underground to stimulate natural gas flow in ‘tight’ formations 20 miles south of Pinedale. “Here we are, 30-plus years later, still trying to extort energy from the gas-bearing formation known as the Pinedale Anticline, or locally the Mesa, an area of approximately 200,000 acres,” he writes.
“The atom bombs slated for Project Wagon Wheel were never detonated, but I remain stunned at the impacts we are currently allowing to be imposed on Mesa wildlife. In the words of one of my more radical colleagues, “we allowed the BLM to nuke it anyway!” I believe our wildlife resources deserve better and I believe that science and technology is available for us to do better. We must demand better.”
For the complete article by Dr. Alldredge, click on this story link: Professor Emeritus: Have We ‘Nuked’ Pinedale’s Big Game Herds?”
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