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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

B-L-M Revs Up for More Drilling for the Red Desert

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Monday, January 7, 2008   

Rawlins, WY – Ninety-eight percent for oil and gas, and two percent for recreation and wildlife. That's how conservation groups sum up the latest proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for how to use more than four million acres of public land in Wyoming, including the eastern half of the Red Desert.

Erik Molvar with the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance says more than 100,000 people submitted comments to the agency, and almost all of them suggested a slower pace for oil and gas development, and special protection for places like Adobe Town. He's not sure the BLM is listening.

"What we got was a plan that increases the amount of oil and gas development under the same old habitat protection measures that we know don't work based on the science."

The area is rich in wildlife and popular for hunting and fishing. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department reports annual revenues of about $155-million from hunting, fishing and tourism. The BLM contends its plan balances protecting wildlife with meeting national energy demands, but Molvar counters there are ways to manage industrial development to lessen the impact on the land and wildlife. He doesn't believe the agency is following that path.

"In point of fact, when you look at their actions, they're continuing down the path of approving industrial projects that increase the destruction of wildlife habitat on public lands."

Some land proposed as wilderness, including the Pedro Mountains, would be off-limits to development under the BLM proposal. Anyone who commented on the original plan can file a protest with the BLM office in Rawlins.



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