RHETORIC:
Just this week the President of the Western Energy Alliance, Tim Wigley, claimed oil and gas development has a negligible impact on the landscape. He said, “The amount of impact we’re talking about on federal lands is a postage stamp on the United States. It’s very, very, very little impact.” Fox News, 9/27/2012.
REALITY:
CSU Study Links Oil and Gas Development to “Large-Scale” Changes
According to a Colorado State University report due out this fall, oil and gas development can “cause large-scale and novel alterations to ecosystems, resulting in habitat loss and fragmentation that strongly impact terrestrial wildlife populations and their ecosystems”. The Coloradoan, 9/27/2012.
Studies Find Declining Deer and Pronghorn Populations Around Oil and Gas
Mule deer populations in the Pinedale Anticline—a gas field in Sublette County, Wyoming—decreased by 60 percent between 2001, when natural gas development began in earnest, and 2011. Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, 4/2011.
In Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming pronghorn have declined by 64 percent in some places, while mule deer populations have decreased up to 36 percent. Declines are associated with oil and gas development. Denver Post, 8/9/2011.