Wyoming’s Red Desert Makes “52 Places” List
Monday, October 15, 2007
Lander, WY – Wyoming's "Wild Heart of the West" has made the list of 52 places that best embody America's wild legacy, released in a new report by the Sierra Club that focuses on what it will take to preserve these areas. The Red Desert is also included, because it has become ground zero in the debate over oil and gas drilling.
Report author Myke Bybee explains in Wyoming, the pace of drilling development has even raised concerns with locals who are not the state's "typical" environmentalists.
"The impacts and results of unchecked development have made strange bedfellows which include Wyoming ranchers and oil and gas people."
Bybee says the reservoirs of natural gas and oil beneath the desert's surface can play a role in meeting the nation's energy needs, but the speed at which coal bed methane is depleted, as well as the costs to the people and land, are at the center of the debate. He is concerned that every new well drilled means a network of roads and pipelines, details that are often missing when drilling plans are presented.
"The projection of these wells define a surface occupancy of two acres. However, that does not include all the other associated impacts."
The Red Desert is home to 350 species, as well as cultural sites that document Native American settlements.
The full report is available online, at www.sierraclub.org.
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