Drill Drill Drill

I previously wrote about stopping the drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Unfortunately, there are more places we need to protect. The Bush Administration’s “lease and drill everything” policy is aimed at opening some of our most fragile places to oil and gas development. Here is a list of places that are too fragile to drill, and we need to take action to prevent it:

1. Beartooth Front, Wyoming

2. Bridger-Teton Nation Forest's Wyoming Range, Wyoming

3. Carrizo Plain National Monument, California

4. Clear Fork Divide, Colorado

5. Grand Mesa Slopes, Colorado

6. HD Mountains Roadless Area, Colorado

7. Little Missouri National Grassland, North Dakota

8. Otero Mesa, New Mexico

9. Red Desert, Wyoming

10. Roan Plateau, Colorado

11. Rocky Mountain Front, Montana

12. Teshekpuk Lake, Alaska

13. Upper Green River Valley, Wyoming

14. Utah's Redrock Wilderness

15. Valle Vidal, New Mexico

16. Vermillion Basin, Colorado

The number of oil and gas wells is increasing at a scary rate. There are now more than 63,000 producing oil and gas wells on the public lands and nearly double that amount, at least 118,000 new wells, are planned for Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico.

Drilling is bad for the environment. Full-field oil and gas development means production facilities, staging areas, airstrips, drill pads, and hundreds of miles of pipelines and roads which cause noise, water, air, and light pollution. For wildlife, the development destroys their habitat into smaller and less usable areas. Eventually, animals can no longer survive in these areas at all.

The government is supposed to guard our public lands. The Bureau of Land Management's increased oil and gas permitting activity "has lessened BLM's ability to meet its environmental protection responsibilities," according to a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office

Citizens want to preserve the West's last great places. Voices is speaking out on behalf of protecting areas from drilling, but are often ignored.

Don't let your voice be ignored. Research what you can do to stop this from happening.

I plan on profiling each of these threatened lands in future posts. Please watch these videos.

Nearly 300,000 natural gas and oil wells have already been drilled in the Rockies, and hundreds of thousands more are planned. Watch this video:




Save Colorado's Majestic Roan Plateau



How could you not want to save them?




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