Hunting & Fishing Activists File Challenge To Utah BLM Lease Sale - Demand More Planning - NYT

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Continuing the battle over oil and gas drilling on public lands in Utah, a hunting and fishing group yesterday filed an official protest of 26,000 acres scheduled to be auctionedsoon and cited the need for more planning in crucial wildlife habitat. The lands are scheduled to be offered in a Bureau of Land Management lease sale on Aug. 18 that includes 37 proposed parcels totaling 50,647 acres. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership said the protested acres provide valuable habitat for mule deer, elk, pronghorn, sage grouse and Gunnison sage grouse. A Utah BLM spokesman said that was the only protest received on the upcoming sale.

When protests are filed, the leases can still be sold at auction, but BLM Utah would delay issuing leases until all protests are resolved.

Joel Webster, associate director of campaigns for the TRCP Center for Western Lands, said his group supports responsibly planned energy development. "Our worry with these Utah leases, however, is that advance planning and adequate stipulations for wildlife and recreational resources have not been established prior to the lands being opened to development," he said in a statement. "History indicates that after public lands are leased, very little can be done to address the course of subsequent development on other values and uses like wildlife habitats and hunting."

The protest includes about 9,000 acres of pronghorn habitat in Utah's West Desert region, which is overseen by the BLM's Fillmore Field Office. Since 2007, the group has been requesting that the BLM undertake up-front planning to ensure the area's responsible energy development and sustain activities such as hunting and fishing. Other leases objected to by the sportsmen are located on mule deer and elk winter range in Utah's Book Cliffs and in Gunnison sage grouse habitat southeast of Moab.

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http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/08/04/04greenwire-sportsmen-challenge-utah-parcels-for-lease-57828.html