Moab, Utah
The BLM's Moab Master Leasing Plan will protect wildlife such as pronghorn.. BLM/Bob Wick/Flickr
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Sportsmen take notice: Your efforts on the part of protecting fish and wildlife habitat—and your future—are having positive results.

That’s the take-home message from the recent release of the BLM’s Moab Master Leasing Plan, which will govern how oil and gas development will be handled in more than 800,000 acres of public property in southern Utah.

Sportsmen and other conservationists are hailing it as a major achievement because it returns the BLM to using a balanced approach on multi-use lands that considers fish, wildlife, and outdoors recreation along with energy development—and includes public involvement every step of the way.

That’s how BLM land is supposed to be managed and was for many years. But that system was ditched in favor of a drill-first policy during the Bush Administration. A long battle for reforms by many conservation groups, including Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, with a strong helping hand from the Obama Administration, may be turning the clock back.

The proposals do not stop all energy development, and do not affect current leases. But it brings fairness and parity back into the equation, making sure development does not injure areas important to fish and wildlife and outdoors recreation.

Joel Webster, Western lands director with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said the new plan was created “in a spirit of collaboration that demonstrates how a diverse group of Americans can come together and roll up their sleeves for the benefit of our public lands and all involved.”

Key elements of the plans include:

• Closing 145,000 acres of BLM lands to mineral leasing, including lands adjacent to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks that have been the topic of on-going controversy between the pro-development Utah governor Gary Herbert and conservationists.

• Instituting “no surface occupancy” stipulations—which prohibit occupancy or disturbance on all or part of a lease surface in order to protect special values or use on 219,000 acres.

• Identifying areas suitable for potash development, including a phased approach to test feasibility.

• Reducing the density of well sites and spacing new pads up to 2 miles apart.

The governor has two months to review the plan and comment, and he will get plenty of support to oppose the plan from oil, gas and mining interests.

The heads of Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office has said its analysis shows the plan would cost more than 1,500 jobs resulting in $2 billion of lost economic output and $277 million in state and local tax revenue over the next 15 years.

But plan supporters point out the new plan will save damage to the outdoor recreational industry, which has a larger local impact than resource extraction.

“A report by Headwaters Economics found tourism and recreation produced nearly twice as much tax revenue for Grand County as natural resource industries: $9.8 million to $5.7 million” in one year, Judith Kohler of the National Wildlife Federation explained in an emailed response. “Tourism accounts for nearly a fifth of the county’s total revenue. (The planning area covers 785,000 acres in Grand and San Juan counties.)”

And Kohler pointed out the plan doesn’t stop oil and gas development, but simply regulates it to protect vital fish, wildlife, and recreational resources.

“The planning area includes important habitat for native herds of desert bighorn sheep in Utah as well as pronghorn and mule deer. The area contains segments of the Colorado River that are habitat for endangered fish like the bonytail, Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub and razorback sucker.”

But, as in most cases of reform benefitting fish and wildlife on public lands, sportsmen have to keep an eye on this process.