Linkmeister

There goes Wyoming

When Bush/Cheney lose the Field and Stream crowd, you know they're failing.

The Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana—approximately 13 million acres of prairie, escarpments, and mountains—provides the starkest example of how the Bush administration’s unbridled energy policy is running roughshod over our public lands. The BLM’s final environmental impact statement for the area calls for about 66,000 new coalbed methane (CBM) wells (about 14,000 have already been drilled in Wyoming; several hundred in Montana), 26,000 miles of new roads, and 52,000 miles of new pipelines.

Peter Dube, an outfitter from Buffalo, Wyoming, has already felt these impacts firsthand. "My ranch is out in the sticks," he says, "60 miles from Buffalo, 45 miles from Gillette, and I’ve had to wait to pull onto my county road because the truck traffic is so bad—with smog like L.A." Pronghorn and mule deer habitat has become fragmented, and his hunters have lost what Dube calls "the aesthetic experience" of being in a remote and quiet landscape.

Energy über alles, and to hell with the landscape, the animals, the way of life. Yup, sounds like a couple of oil guys are in charge.

From Think Progress