Forest withdraws consent for Wyoming Range leases
The Bridger-Teton National Forest is recommending the forest formally withdraw its consent to the Bureau of Land Management to offer oil and gas leases on 39,490 acres on the eastern slope of the Wyoming Range.
The forest released a Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on its review of the land on the boundary of the forest in Sublette County, Wyoming.
The full statement is available here .
The draft was released for public comment in April 2016. At that time, the preferred alternative was a “no leasing” alternative. In April, the forest identified the need to supplement the air quality analysis and the wildlife analysis while considering new information on other issues. Those issues included protection of threatened animals, impacts on local air quality, other energy projects already underway in the area, and public comments.
Because of the project’s long history and the significant level of public interest and concern for the proposal, expressed in over 62,000 comments on the Draft SEIS, the Undersecretary of Agriculture, Robert Bonnie, has elected to retain his authority to sign the Record of Decision (ROD) for this project. This decision will be made 30-days after publication of the Notice of Availability of this FSEIS in the Federal Register on December 16, 2016.
