|
December 3, 2009
Here is a huge holiday present for our forests. On behalf of Wild South, WildLaw filed a formal protest with the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a proposal to lease 148 parcels covering 71,043 acres in the National Forests in Alabama for oil and gas drilling. Those parcels were to be part of today’s Dec. 3, 2009, proposed regional lease sale at the BLM’s offices in Virginia, but in response to our protest, the BLM withdrew all 148 parcels from the sale.
Massive areas were proposed to be leased without the proper environmental impacts analysis having been done under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the proper consultation having been done under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Vast areas of the Talladega Division of the Talladega National Forest were up for grabs to oil and gas speculators, including the Pinhoti National Recreational Trail and the Chinnabee Silent Trail. The parcels also included Rebecca Mountain (an area proposed by Wild South as wilderness for more than a decade), the viewshed of the Cheaha Wilderness, the viewshed of the Dugger Mountain Wilderness, and most of the recreational lakes and campgrounds in the forest.
In the Oakmulgee Division of the Talladega National Forest, the BLM proposed to lease the only public property in the forest that was along the Cahaba River, Alabama’s longest undammed river and the most biologically-diverse small river in the nation.
In the Conecuh National Forest, the forest’s main recreational lake and all its shores were proposed for leasing. Also, the headwaters of the Blackwater River, one of the coastal plain’s premier recreational waters, were included in the proposed lease sale.
While small scale oil and gas leasing (an average of one well per year on five acres) has been successfully done on the Oakmulgee and Conecuh in the past without significant impacts, the Forest Service and BLM have never done the analysis required to look at and support leasing such massive areas in general. They also have never looked at the impacts of leasing on any scale on the treasured wild lands and recreational resources that were in jeopardy this time.
Essentially, the wildest and finest places in the Talladega and Conecuh National Forests were about to be opened to oil and gas exploration and development. Now, they are off the auction block, this time, and we plan to work with the Forest Service to amend the management plan for the National Forests in Alabama to remove these lands from the leasable base permanently. Such an effort is already ongoing on the Bankhead National Forest, where a previous legal action by WildLaw for Wild South resulted in the entire Bankhead being taken out of the leasable base during a multi-year revision to the plan.
|
