Unlikely environmentalists

From staff and wire reports Monday, August 21, 2006

JACKSON -- Gary Amerine doesn’t look like an environmentalist.

He doesn’t wear Birkenstocks, tie-dye shirts or a peace sign tied around his neck with a length of hemp rope. He looks and talks more like a rancher, with a cowboy hat and a weathered face.

Amerine doesn’t really act like an environmentalist either. Instead of ambushing mink coats with cans of spray paint, he makes a living leading hunters into the woods to kill elk, deer, moose, antelope and mountain lions.

However, Amerine in fact does represent a recent addition to the environmental movement. Ever since the U.S. Forest Service earmarked his hunting grounds in the Wyoming Range for oil and gas development, the owner of Greys River Trophies has joined a growing coalition of sportsmen working to preserve the wild lands where they work and play.

Fearing that energy development sweeping through the Rockies could permanently scar the landscape, hunters and anglers are forming alliances with environmental groups such as the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club. The two sides, which have sparred in the past, are trying to protect such areas as the Wyoming Range, Colorado's Roan Plateau, Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, and New Mexico's Valle Vidal.

Amerine has teamed with fellow outfitter Dustin Child in a quest to protect the Wyoming Range from oil and gas leases that could, they say, turn the Wyoming Range into another Jonah Field, one of the densest gas fields in the nation.

For these outfitters, protecting this land isn’t just a moral duty -- it’s a matter of survival, they say. Many of the hunters who pay top dollar to hunt big game at Child’s and Amerine’s hunting camps said they wouldn’t return if wells marred the landscape.

“No one in their right mind would pay to take a scenic pack trip through oil and gas wells,” Amerine said. “The Wyoming Range is on the front burner right now. It’s gonna set a precedent for a lot of other areas.”

Joining the outfitters are other sportsmen's groups, including Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife and Trout Unlimited.

"For the last three years, we've been organizing hunters and anglers all over the West on energy-related issues because there's just been an unprecedented amount of gas and oil development going on all over the West in some of our last remaining wild places," said David Stalling, Trout Unlimited's Western field coordinator based in Missoula, Mont.

'Marriage of convenience'

The efforts have been noticed. At a recent energy forum in Denver, Ken Wonstolen of the oil and gas association called the alliance of outdoors groups and environmentalists "an effective marriage of convenience right now."

"It's something we have to address very seriously," Wonstolen said.

Politicians have noticed, too.

In Wyoming, Republican Sen. Craig Thomas joined Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal in objecting to further oil and gas leases in the Wyoming Range.

Bill Ritter, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, has sent letters to sportsmen, pledging to be a good steward of public lands. His Republican opponent, Rep. Bob Beauprez, has also met with hunting and fishing groups.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., locked in a tight re-election race, has introduced legislation to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal land along the Rocky Mountain Front, valued by hunters and environmentalists alike. Two years ago, he advised groups opposed to drilling there to raise private money to buy the federal leases.

In June, Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico co-sponsored a bill prohibiting energy development in the Valle Vidal after her Democratic challenger signed a pledge opposing drilling. Environmentalists and sportsmen have long urged protection for the 101,794-acre valley in northern New Mexico.

Sen. Ken Salazar and Rep. John Salazar, both Colorado Democrats, have said the top of the Roan Plateau shouldn't be drilled.

This kind of bipartisan opposition in the West helped scuttle a plan by the Bush administration to sell 300,000 acres of national forest, said Daniel Kemmis, a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. Supporters said the sale would raise money for rural schools.

"That was as stillborn a proposal as you could find, in large part because so many Western Republicans opposed it," Kemmis said. "They saw these broad-based coalitions that are now just too politically potent to ignore."

Working with activists

Alliances among environmentalists, loggers, ranchers and hunters have evolved as environmental groups realized they needed local support, Kemmis said. He said he believes more industries will follow timber companies in working with grass-roots activists.

"I think it would be very good for the West if we begin to see more of that kind of cooperation," Kemmis said.

That's exactly what the executive director of Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has proposed for the Wyoming Range.

Bob Wharff recently proposed forming a sportsmen's coalition to work with landowners, oil and gas industry officials, and state and federal agencies to help protect wildlife in the Wyoming Range.

"We can have both world-class wildlife and an economically viable mineral industry," Wharff said. "However, (his group) believes that we should cease adding additional leases on Forest Service lands in the Wyoming Range and forestall any drilling on forest lands until we can be collectively assured that our combined activities are not furthering the decline of big game populations."

Energy industry officials have said that drilling in the area can be done in an environmentally sensitive manner and without significant harm to wildlife. They contend that drilling in areas such as the Wyoming Range provides stability for job growth, provides the state with a stable revenue source and helps the country be less dependent on foreign oil for energy production.

Wharff said the Wyoming Range is an important enough area to warrant "further review of the accumulative impacts" that are limiting the recovery of big game populations.

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