Just a short time ago, I was walking on the Camel’s Hump Glacier around 12,000 feet in the southern end of the Wind River Range, and I caught a now familiar odor. At first, I didn’t recognize it because it was so out of place but it didn’t take long before I realized it was “the smell of money”. The smell of money is what the oil and gas industry calls the toxic witches’ brew of compounds the industry spews into the atmosphere in the quest for methane or what is commonly known as natural gas. This smell of money is a mix of VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) and HAP’s (Hazardous Air Pollutants) including benzene, toluene, formaldehyde and a few dozen other toxic goodies. Living in Wyoming, I have become familiar with the sickly sweet petrochemical odor of these substances over the last few years as the state has plunged into its final petro boom.

Sublette County once had the cleanest air in the lower 48 and now we have ozone exceedances similar to Denver or Salt Lake City. Though the boom started 7 years ago, no one has bothered to start monitoring levels of VOC’s and HAP’s. So we have no idea what those levels are. Only recently has research started to come in on the impacts of this ‘development’ on a few wildlife species, and of course, the picture is not pretty. One such study by University of Montana Professor David Naugle showed an 86% decline in sage grouse populations in the Powder River coal-bed methane fields between 2001 and 2005. In similar areas that have not yet been drilled, Dr. Naugle found “only” at 12% decline. There is some preliminary information on a pygmy rabbit research project in the Pinedale Anticline field that also looks bad.

Looking through this month’s “Hot Sheet”, the Wyoming BLM State Office’s list of current projects, one sees many of the Field Offices currently undertaking Resource Management Plan (RMP) revisions which are listed as “Bureau Time Sensitive Plans.” The latter is bureau-speak for those plans that cover areas of large amounts of hydrocarbons where the plans must be completed prior to January 20th, 2009 so that the decisions to rape, pillage and plunder will be in place for at least 15-20 years.

The “Hot Sheet” lists NEPA analyses taking place right now for nearly 20,000 new wells. A recent study by University of Wyoming predicted from current projects and trends that around 35% of BLM lands in the state of Wyoming will be in full field development within 15 years.

When you combine this acute explosion of oil and gas drilling with the chronic habitat degradation caused by private livestock grazing on over 99% of our public lands, you have a recipe for disaster on a massive scale.

Recently, we have joined Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in a case filed in D.C. to protect public lands in the Atlantic Rim area from further fragmentation by 2,000 new wells, hundreds of miles of new roads and all the other construction to deliver us “clean burning natural gas”. As we move forward, we will be taking more action to protect sage-dependent species and the habitat on which they depend from the leviathan that is the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, while Wyoming is ground zero for this petro boom, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Utah are also facing an onslaught by the industry and their friends running the government. I just hope some wild lands survive after we have sucked every last molecule of hydrocarbons to feed our addiction.

Jonathan Ratner is Wyoming director of WWP. He lives in Fremont County, Wyoming.