Protection for Adobe Town

In the time since I lasted posted anything about the Red Desert (here), there’s been some good news. On November 28, Wyoming’s Environmental Quality Council voted 5 to 1 to designate 180,000 acres of Adobe Town as rare and uncommon (R&U). This designation prohibits mining of solid minerals if

“The proposed mining operation would irreparably harm, destroy, or materially impair any area that has been designated by the council a rare or uncommon area and having particular historical, archaeological, wildlife, surface geological, botanical or scenic value;” [Title 35, Chapter 11, article 4 (m) (iv)]

Approximately 86,000 acres of the Adobe Town area was already protected (sort of) as a Wilderness Study Area (WSA). The R&U designation includes this area and extends it to include surrounding areas (the Haystacks, Willow Creek Rim, the flats near Skull Creek Rim, and some of Powder Rim). Although the R&U designation doesn’t protect areas outside of the WSA from oil and gas development (hence the emphasis on solid minerals above), it’s hoped that the BLM will take the state’s desire to protect this area into consideration when permitting future development.

Adobe Town is located southwest of Wamsutter, WY.

The area outlined in pink is the current WSA, and the green is the area designated as rare and uncommon. This map (and the map at the top of the post) is taken from a brochure produced by Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (download the brochure as a pdf here). BCA is responsible for pettitioning for the R&U designation. Their petition can be downloaded from their website. To see the attachments to the petition, and subsequent public comments to the Environmental Quality Council (including the what the oil companies had to say), visit here. And, since you really should go visit the area, here's a BLM document on visiting Adobe Town (BCA also has directions on their website). Finally, BCA published a nice document about Adobe Town, describing the major areas with lots of photographs. You can download the pdf here (but be forwarned, it's about 15 mb).

Restoration work in Rocky Mountain National Park

If you’re ever out west, Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is one of those places you really have to consider visiting. Last weekend, about 60 or 70 volunteers with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV) planted sedges and willow in RMNP.

The goal was to restore a former wetland that was demolished by a flood in 1982, when a man-made dam collapsed, sending flood waters down the Roaring River, through the park, and into the nearby town of Estes Park, Colorado. The flood also created Fan Lake where a wet meadow used to be.

In 1996, the Park Service breached the debris dam that had formed as a result of the flood (and which trapped the water forming Fan Lake), but the wet meadow never came back, in part because the hydrology of the area had been permanently altered. (The Roaring River entered the meadow at a different place post-flood, so the area never really dried out like expected.) Another problem was heavy elk browsing on willows trying to colonize the meadow after Fan Lake was drained.

To help restore the wetland, the Park Service rerouted the Roaring River back into its historical channel and fenced a large part of the meadow to keep elk out. To speed things along even more, they worked with WRV to plant nearly 20,000 sedges and almost 1,000 willow seedlings. In a few years, the recently planted vegetation will have continued to grow and will provide habitat for birds, cover for fish, and food for elk and moose.

Here’s a few pictures of the area taken by Desiree Holtz

You can see more pictures by Desiree of the area and the volunteers here.

Red Desert

If you look at a map of Wyoming, you’ll notice a big empty area in the southern part of the state between Rawlins and Rock Springs – few paved roads, fewer towns, no national parks, no national forests. From Highway 28 and 287 on the north to the Colorado border on the south, there’s little for a map maker to do that isn’t connected to I-80 in that part of Wyoming. But get away from the interstate, and you’ll see a little known jewel known as the Red Desert.

Some of the most spectacular areas include Adobe Town, Kilpecker Dunes, the Pinnacles, Oregon Buttes, and Honeycomb Buttes. But the most impressive thing about the Red Desert is its expansiveness. Don’t confuse expansiveness with emptiness, however. This area is home to wild horses, elk, and pronghorn aplenty. Unfortunately, it’s also home to some big league oil, gas, and coal reserves.

Much of the Red Desert is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and in these days of high fossil fuel prices and devil-may-care development policies, the BLM isn’t doing much to stand in the way of the drilling rigs.

Within the last month, the BLM approved the drilling of 2000 wells along the Atlantic Rim (located along the southeastern edge of the Red Desert). The majority of these wells are for natural gas (specifically, coal-bed methane). Coal-bed methane is natural gas that occupies the interstices of a coal seam. The methane is held in place by water pressure. To get the methane out, gas companies drill down and pump off some of the water. The reduction in water pressure allows the methane to escape and be captured by the wells. Normally, the water is just released into surface waters (which can often cause problems due to saline water), but conservationists were able to get the BLM to require reinjection of the water on the Atlantic Rim.

One potential problem on the Atlantic Rim is methane seeps. These can occur naturally, but there is some evidence that pumping by test wells in the area has led to the formation of new seeps. These are dangerous because the methane is flammable but odorless and colorless. Be careful where you light your camp stove.

Larger concerns relate to wildlife in the area. Some of the areas of highest use by mule deer, elk, pronghorn, and sage grouse are frequently the same areas targeted for drilling. And, although the oil and gas industry claims that the disturbance to wildlife will cease once the wells quit producing, the scars of development tend to be long lasting in an area that gets less than 10” of precipitation a year. Wagon tracks from stagecoach lines used 150 years ago are still visible in places.

For more information on the Red Desert (and pictures that are better than mine) try these sites:

Friends of the Red Desert
Biodiversity Conservation Alliance
National Wildlife Federation
Wyoming Outdoor Council
An article about coal-bed methane in Orion
An article about the Red Desert at NWF

Maybe not the best photographs of all time, but here are some that I took from a recent trip to the Red Desert:

Adobe Town:

And another Adobe Town (from the North Rim of Adobe Town):

The White Mountain Petroglyphs:

And Honeycomb Buttes:

Photos from Arapaho NWR

As promised (about a month ago), here are a few photos from the restoration work at Arapaho National wildlife Refuge.

This is one of the exclosures. One mature willow was already present; the newly planted willows are just thin vertical lines.


Here's a view of the northern part of the refuge (looking west). The meandering stream is the Illinois River.

Restoration work in ANWR

No, not that ANWR. I'm talking about the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge in northern Colorado. I and 30-40 other volunteers with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV) spent the weekend planting willows and building fenced exclosures there.

The willows will hopefully provide habitat for migratory songbirds. Previous use of the land resulted in the loss of willows in some areas, and high elk and moose populations have prevented willow regeneration. This is where WRV comes in. They provided the labor to plant willow cuttings and to fence them off so that elk and moose can't browse them down to the ground. The idea is that the exclosures will allow the willows to grow large enough so that parts of the shrubs will be above the reach of herbivores.

I spent Saturday working on building up a fence around one of the exclosures. I can say that my fence building skills are a bit lacking, but I managed not to hurt myself (or anyone else), so that's encouraging. On Sunday, I planted willow cuttings in pots that some high school students in Walden, CO ("Moose watching capital of Colorado") will take care of before planting them at the refuge either this fall or next spring. Other volunteers planted freshly cut or recently cut willows into the exclosures. It will be interesting to see how well the willow cuttings fare over the summer; I think the survivorship of cuttings is fairly low.

In any case, it was good to be outside after being cooped up in my office all spring. The breeding season for birds on the refuge isn't in full swing yet, but there were some snipe around to add entertainment value to the weekend. I'll add a few pictures of the refuge in a week or two. (See what I mean about behind the curve? I don't even own a digital camera.)