In a significant public lands ruling, a federal judge told the BLM that the agency cannot lease whatever land it pleases for drilling without considering ways to protect its wilderness characteristics or without considering the effects of leasing and drilling on endangered species.
The Wilderness Society, along with a coalition of other environmental groups, sued the Bureau of Land Management after it sold oil and gas leases on about 20,000 acres of the 32,000 acre South Shale Ridge citizen-proposed wilderness in Colorado. With its strange sculpted formations hidden within miles of twisting canyons, multicolored badlands, and great views, South Shale Ridge is truly an impressive place to experience, while also providing a home for bald eagles and extremely rare plants like the Uinta Basin hookless cactus (an endangered wildflower). Despite its uniqueness and vulnerability, the area has been oscillating between wilderness protection and leasing for drilling for the last two decades. The Wilderness Society and other Colorado conservationists spent years working with the BLM to highlight the need to protect the wilderness values of South Shale Ridge. Even though the agency acknowledged that South Shale Ridge met the statutory criteria for Wilderness, this Administration's policies forbade BLM from designating new Wilderness Study Areas and required BLM to prioritize oil and gas development over all other values. These policies led to the leasing of South Shale Ridge and this lawsuit.
On August 6, 2007, Judge Marcia S. Krieger ruled that the BLM must stop all leasing and prevent any lease from taking effect on South Shale Ridge because the agency violated both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act by neglecting to fully consider either an option allowing energy companies to drill from outside the area without harming the surface of the wildland or the effect of drilling on threatened wildlife. The judge called the BLM's decision to lease South Shale Ridge arbitrary and capricious.
Now, legally protected from invasive and destructive drilling, at least temporarily, the area has again been proposed as a wilderness area. The lawsuit serves as strong legal precedent to force the BLM to consider how gas development can proceed without destroying the environment rather than its standard procedure of leasing entire landscapes and looking at the impacts of drilling later on.
