What's At Stake?
The spectacular Roan Plateau is located a few miles northwest of Rifle in central Colorado. Rising 3,500 feet above the Colorado River valley, the dramatic Roan Cliffs give way to the broad and rolling Roan Plateau. Several streams drain the area and eventually form stunning box canyons. The area offers outstanding views of the surrounding landscape.
The tremendous variation in soils and elevation (5,000 to 9,000 feet) creates spectacular scenery and diverse habitats including juniper woodlands, mountain mahogany, gamble oak, Douglas fir, aspen, and wildflower meadows. There are even a few magical hanging garden seeps tucked away in the landscape, and the amazing 200-foot East Fork Falls. In addition to its many ecological values, the Roan Plateau is a favorite place for hunting, fishing and backcountry recreation.
The Roan Plateau is home to many fish, wildlife and rare plant species, including big game species such as mule deer, elk, black bear and mountain lion. There are 17 rare vertebrate species, including the federally listed peregrine falcon and bald eagle, as well as Colombian sharptail grouse, sage grouse, great basin spadefoot toads, northern leopard frogs, and bats. Northwater Creek is also home to one of the world's most genetically pure populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout. According to the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, the Roan Plateau is one of the most diverse places in western Colorado: "We are aware of only three additional areas of comparable size in western Colorado that document such a high richness of species of concern." Of these four areas, the Roan Plateau is the only area still unprotected.
Protection Status
Recognizing the many values of this special place, citizens proposed the heart of the Roan Plateau for wilderness protection in 1998. Four separate units on the Plateau -- totaling about 38,000 acres of the 73,000-acre planning area - are in the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal, and were subsequently proposed for protection in wilderness legislation sponsored by Representatives Diana DeGette and Mark Udall.
The Roan Plateau is but one of 60 places included in the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal, and being promoted for wilderness protection by the Colorado Wilderness Network, a coalition of over 340 local governments, businesses, and conservation, recreation, religious, and civic organizations within Colorado. Several years ago, conservation groups requested that Bureau of Land Management (BLM) protect these citizen-proposed wildlands from damaging development in particular oil and gas leasing until Congress could consider them for wilderness designation. In response, the Colorado BLM adopted a policy to review citizen-proposed wilderness areas as needed before it allowed any "irretrievable or irreversible" activities that could destroy wilderness values.
In addition, because the Roan Plateau was recently transferred to the BLM from the Department of Energy, the BLM must now conduct a public planning process to develop a management plan for the area. This plan will govern the management of all uses - including recreation, fish and wildlife, livestock grazing, and potential wilderness protection, as well as determine whether the area will be leased for oil and gas development.
Why is Roan Plateau at Risk?
Because of its location within the gas-rich Piceance Basin, the oil and gas industry has placed the Roan Plateau high on its wish list. While no oil and gas leasing can occur on top of the Plateau during the planning process, the final management plan will determine the fate of this proposed wilderness area.
As with many areas across the West, the BLM is under tremendous pressure to open the Roan Plateau to energy development. The Bush Administration's energy policy would rollback existing environmental protections for public lands. One such provision directs the BLM to study and remove "impediments" to oil and gas development on public lands - including such restrictions as limiting drilling on steep slopes, seasonal wildlife closures during calving season, and interim protection for proposed wilderness areas such as Roan Plateau.
The Bush Administration's energy policy also contains billions of dollars of subsidies for the oil and gas industry that would make it economical to develop remote places on our public lands that might otherwise be protected for other values. Because of the oil and gas industry's interest, development of the Roan Plateau management plan has been put on a fast-track timeline, as have revisions for 11 other BLM resource management plans across the West in order to promote additional oil and gas development.
Current Oil and Gas Development
In Colorado, over 90 percent of the lands managed by the BLM are open to potential oil and gas leasing, and drilling permits are being issued at a record pace. In 1991, 26 new leases were issued by BLM in Colorado. In 2001, 669 leases were approved, covering 725,000 acres - a greater than 25 percent increase in the number of leases issued over the last decade. Colorado's landscape is increasingly being roaded, drilled and developed.
Already many of the public and private lands surrounding the Roan Plateau are being drilled for oil and gas, including the base of the Plateau along Interstate 70. Due to a recent decision of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, oil and gas development on private lands adjacent to Roan Plateau (south of Anvil Point and north of Parachute) is occurring at 20-acre well spacing - one of the highest densities in the nation.
In contrast, the cliffs and uplands of Roan Plateau include some of the last wild tracts of public land in the region - providing much-needed wildlife habitat and backcountry recreation opportunities in the rapidly developing Grand Valley.
Oil and Gas Potential
The BLM considers gas potential to be moderate to high along the base of the Roan Cliffs and some areas have already been leased and are being drilled. The lands on top of the plateau have some of the same geologic zones as the adjacent producing gas fields, and are thought to have similar potential. However, accessing gas resources on the plateau will be more expensive - because the industry would either have to drill through the extra 3,000-plus feet of the plateau or use directional drilling (drilling at a slant) from the base of the plateau.
Conservationists maintain that the Roan Plateau is a place where we can have our cake and eat it too - by allowing oil and gas development at the base of the plateau, while protecting the plateau's uplands. It could be a perfect place for the oil and gas industry to showcase its claims of environmentally benign energy development by using such new technologies as directional drilling - where surface resources are protected by drilling at an angle from outside the area. Such a balanced management plan would also allow the new administration to prove its critics wrong about its intent to rollback environmental protections.
Solution
Last year, the BLM initiated a public decisonmaking process to develop a management plan for the Roan Plateau and has been gathering input on how citizens want the area to be managed. At stake is the fate of the Roan Plateau, including whether the area will be protected as wilderness or developed for oil and gas. The BLM is crafting management alternatives this spring, with a draft plan due out in September. All concerned citizens should write to the BLM to urge the agency to protect the wilderness values of this special place.
Glenwood Springs BLM Field Office
P.O. Box 1009
Glenwood Springs, CO 81602
(970) 947-2824; or visit their website.
In addition, please take action to ensure that all citizen-proposed wilderness lands, many of them overlooked by BLM in its original inventories, are reviewed for their wilderness values before any "irreversible" development is allowed. The Colorado wilderness review policy, which has been in place for the past five years, has proven successful in establishing a process for identifying wilderness-quality lands that should be protected while allowing for oil and gas development to proceed on non-wilderness quality lands. A similar national policy, based on the Colorado policy, was adopted last year. Write to the new BLM Director, Kathleen Clarke, and urge her to uphold these existing Colorado and national wilderness review policies. The vast majority of BLM lands in Colorado and nationally are already open to oil and gas development - we should preserve our last few wild, unprotected special places.
Kathleen Clarke
BLM Director
Bureau of Land Management
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20240
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