BLM limits biologists’ ability to study harm from drilling

PINEDALE, Wyo. – The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents.

The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands.

Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a six fold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade.

Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields.

Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife.

“The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call ‘biostitutes,’ rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing,” said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM’s Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. “They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it.”

Belinda is not alone in his view that the BLM, in its focused pursuit of increased drilling, is neglecting its congressional mandate to manage federal lands for “multiple use.”

For years the BLM has reallocated money Congress intended for wildlife conservation to spend on energy. A national evaluation by the agency of its wildlife expenditures found three years ago that about one-third of designated wildlife money was spent “outside” of wildlife programs.

An internal BLM follow-up study found last year that this widespread diversion of money has caused “numerous lost opportunities” to protect wildlife.

These findings were echoed last year in a report by the Government Accountability Office, which said that BLM managers order their field staff to devote increasing time to processing drilling permits, leaving less time to mitigate the consequences of oil and gas extraction.

“It has become almost a cultural practice in the BLM to spend money that is appropriated for one purpose for whatever purpose somebody deems is a higher priority,” said a senior BLM official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he would be fired for speaking publicly.

The BLM’s Wyoming director, Bob Bennett, disagreed strongly with this assessment. Bennett said that the BLM is “doing our level best to deal with the impacts” of energy development on wildlife.

“If a wildlife biologist is working on an application for a permit to drill, that doesn’t mean he is not doing wildlife work,” Bennett said. “The wildlife job is a broad job, and it does involve energy.”