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Western Governors Weigh Balancing Energy, Wildlife ; Members of the Western Governors' Association Discussed a Regional Collaboration for the Protection of Natural Wildlife Corridors

Posted on: Monday, 30 June 2008, 09:02 CDT

By Michelle Dynes

By Michelle Dynes

mdynes@wyomingnews.com

JACKSON HOLE - Not every boundary is easy to identify.

Elk and pronghorn antelope do not recognize county or state lines as herds move from winter to summer territories, but survival is dependent on the ability to migrate.

Regional governors discussed how they could collaborate to protect wildlife corridors during the opening of the 2008 Western Governors' Association on Sunday.

Today, 60 percent of new home construction is within one of these corridors, said Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the Department of the Interior. Energy development also competes with natural habitat for valuable space.

"You often have world-class habitat that is sitting right above world-class energy reserves," he said.

Meanwhile, the demand for energy continues to grow as gasoline prices push to $4 a gallon and beyond.

Nevertheless, the quest for additional energy resources doesn't have to further fragment wildlife movement. The Healthy Lands Initiative within President Bush's 2008 budget is an attempt to protect whole ecosystems instead of managing habitat one acre at a time. The plan calls for cooperative conservation efforts to restore nearly half a million acres. The $22 million investment also combines the expertise of federal and local agencies to protect western landscapes.

Kempthorne said other positive developments come from the energy industry as it learns to work with less space. Today one wellhead can take a third of an acre instead of 10 acres, limiting surface impacts with multi-directional drilling. Pipelines can move condensation collection underground, limiting diesel truck traffic above ground. He added that the goal is to eliminate 160,000 traffic miles.

Developers are using ice roads in Alaska and wooden mats in the Western United States to further limit habitat disturbances.

In Colorado, the energy industry is the No. 1 buyer for solar panels. He said companies use solar energy to power remote locations.

Technology also can help land developers plan around wildlife migration corridors and avoid sensitive areas, said Jack Dangermond, CEO of GIS and mapping software company Environmental Systems Research Institute.

He encouraged the members of the Western Governors' Association to create a collaborative system that maps habitat corridors and allows officials to plan with this information in mind.

"The technology and methods are here now," he said.

Mapping software allows him to chart the migration of species as well as the spread of the human footprint.

He added that unlike other Western states, Wyoming's biggest challenge is not population growth but oil and gas development.

For example, the natural bottleneck south of Jackson known as "Trappers Point" has been reduced to a few hundred meters. And additional development will only continue to shrink these pathways.

But energy isn't the only culprit. A state highway in Arizona cut through an elk migration corridor, increasing car accidents and elk deaths. The solution was building underpasses to allow elks to bypass the highway.

Dangermond added that better planning allows development to co- evolve alongside nature, minimizing the overall impacts. He also supports the WGA's Science Committee Report, which calls for habitat inventories across the region.

Steve Elbert, vice chairman of energy developer BP America, said today's energy prices are the results of decisions made by lawmakers 10 years ago. But the pressure will continue even as developers expand the production of nonrenewable and renewable energy sources.

"Our customers - your constituents - want to know what we're going to do to make energy affordable," he said. "You create the framework - establish the boundaries - and we operate within them."

Elbert added that it is possible to work around wildlife. A good example is Alaska's 1970s-era Transatlantic pipeline. The initial prediction was that the addition would put the state's caribou population into decline. Forty years later the herd is actually six times larger, he said.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said the WGA also should develop a uniform data collection system so that information can carry across state lines as wildlife migrate. At the same time, this database must be scientifically credible, he added.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said since energy leases have a long lifespan, Western lawmakers need to act quickly to begin corridor preservation now.

(c) 2008 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Source: Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

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