By Colin Kearns

Senior Editor Colin Kearns and photographer Kevin Cooley spent three days exploring what’s at stake in the battle for water in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the consequences of irresponsible drilling for oil and gas in Wyoming’s Little Mountain region. Here’s what they found on day two.

Dwayne Meadows, of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, glances at a map of the region. That checkerboard pattern? All of those colored blocks indicated leases for energy development.

Today starts early. The breakfast bell rings at 5:30 a.m. By six, we’re in the in the trucks headed toward Little Mountain to view some wildlife—and we don’t have to wait long. By 6:30, we’ve already seen mule deer, pronghorns, one moose, and a pack of wild horses. The crew from Trout Unlimited wasn’t kidding when they said this area was rich with wildlife. I mean, wild horses.

We take it slow on Little Mountain’s dirt roads. We do this because the land—decorated with wild flowers, bitterbrush, sagebrush, junipers, and aspen trees—deserves to be appreciated. Even the patches of dead junipers, killed long ago by wildfire, are beautiful in their own way—twisted and bare and pale like a league of freak skeletons frozen on the land. We take it slow so as to not disturb the animals, which we can’t seem to travel a quarter-mile without spotting, be it a mule deer doe with her fawns or a pack of antelope or a nest of juvenile hawks. Life thrives here.