For a Week’s Worth of Gas

Sage grouse are declining so quickly they're being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Already they've been extirpated from at least four states and one Canadian province. Leading sage grouse authority Dr. Clait Braun, director of the Tucson-based Grouse Inc., calls the quarter-mile restriction "a prescription for population extinction," which seems "to have been created to justify existing practices and [is] not based on any reputable science." Exceptions beget more exceptions. As companies are permitted to increase activity, sage grouse and other wildlife die off. Therefore, when consulting biologists look for wildlife, they don't find it, and companies are eligible for more exceptions.

So far, BLM's Pinedale field office has leased about 850,000 of the 928,000 acres it is responsible for. In other words, the public can't use its land because it is reserved for the energy industry. On May 11, 2001, BLM ordered state directors not to issue gas leases until the planning process was complete and the public had had a chance to comment. But three months later it reversed itself.

Then, on June 8, 2004, the Pinedale field office offered about 14,000 additional acres for lease. At this point Wyoming governor Dave Freudenthal became the third Western governor in less than a year to protest the Bush administration's policy of unregulated gas extraction. Auctioning off these leases before environmental review "will only serve to further jeopardize sage grouse habitat, [big game] migration corridors, crucial habitat and other important resources," Governor Freudenthal wrote.

On my last day in Wyoming, local conservationist Linda Baker, of the Upper Green River Valley Coalition, met me outside her Pinedale office at 5 a.m. She knew a lek on the anticline where the sage grouse were still strutting. But they quit when the sun comes up, so she drove fast, spilling coffee on her dungarees. "When I first came to this valley 23 years ago the night was dark and full of stars," she said. "Now it's lit up like the Denver skyline." I saw what she meant. Drilling towers blazed in all directions. Two Questar Corporation rigs, amid a cluster of black tanks and house trailers, ground loudly into the anticline. Questar is drilling for gas in the middle of the most critical big-game winter range in the valley, where regulations forbid such operations from November 15 through April 30. But for the last two winters BLM has granted the company season-long exceptions. Supposedly, the payback is that Questar is underwriting a study of how the large mammals it disturbs use (or don't use) the surrounding habitat. To protect wildlife BLM forbids the public to drive on the anticline's big-game winter range from January 15 to May 1, but it has no qualms about allowing gas-company traffic.

"Wait a minute," said Baker. "This road wasn't here before." It was new, like so many other roads in the valley. "I think we need to be more west." So we took another new road.

When we got to the lek I saw a male and female sage grouse, but there was no mating display. Still, I was delighted to add the species to my life list. Baker was brooding. "Well, I'll show you their droppings," she muttered.

"Neat," I said. The droppings looked like those left by my New England ruffed grouse, but white instead of gray-brown.

"Wait a minute," said Baker. "There aren't enough. This can't be the lek." So we drove farther west, over yet another new road. And there they were—two dozen birds, almost the size of wild turkeys, the males strutting, fanning their spiked tails, puffing their white breast feathers, showing their bright yellow air sacs, booming, butting each other with their chests. It was one of the most stirring scenes I had ever seen in nature.

When the sun topped the white spires of the Wind River Range, the birds wandered off, vanishing into the high sage.