The Eleanor Project

Cora Post Office

In the late fifties we camped at Whiskey Grove Flats along the Green River for most of the summer. Mom, Grammy and Granddad fished for browns and trout while my brothers and sisters and I played in one of the most spectacular spots in the West. Fish was the mainstay for most of our meals around the campfire, and weekly trips to Pinedale meant the much anticipated stop at Clark’s Drugstore for penny candy. About ten miles out of Pinedale we always stopped in the small village of Cora, a once popular stop for trappers and homesteaders. The post office, established in the 1890’s, is made of hand-hewn logs transported from the Upper Green River.

The Pinedale Anticline Project Area (PAPA) is one of the newest gas fields in the continental United States with estimated gas reserves at 40 trillion cubic feet. The project’s area comprises 200,000 acres in southwestern Wyoming and supports approximately 100,000 big-game animals that use the area during migration from summer to winter ranges. More than half of the mule deer that use the Mesa Winter Range, which is part of the anticline, formerly relied on the Pinedale Mesa, the winter range most severely affected by development to date. The Upper Green River area of Wyoming is one of last strongholds for sage grouse in the west. The Pinedale Anticline provides habitat supporting 14 leks, or breeding grounds. Experts have predicted sage grouse extirpation from the PAPA if development proceeds as planned without additional conservation measures. The New Fork River and Green River are world-class trout fisheries within the Pinedale Anticline Project Area. Photo gallery of Pinedale anticline drilling activity, much of which is on prime big game winter range.

In 2005, the BLM Pinedale field office was notified by Ultra Resources, Shell Exploration, Questar, BP America, Stone Energy, Yates Petroleum and others, proposing a new long-term development plan that included limited year-round drilling and completions of natural gas wells. Because the operator’s proposal requested exemption from BLM stipulations for wildlife, which restricts their drilling activities in seasonal migratory ranges, the BLM determined the proposal could cause significant adverse impacts to the environment.

The 2006 draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) outlining the proposed expansion by the operators and planned by the BLM was critized by the EPA with recommendations that the BLM not move forward.

The 2007 revised drilling plan considers the effects of 4,399 additional natural gas wells and surface disturbance increased by 12,000 acres on the Pinedale Anticline. Year-round drilling is proposed on 70,200 acres and would occur in crucial big-game habitats and near sensitive sage grouse habitats. Mule deer populations would be allowed to decline another 15 percent, and the sage grouse population would be allowed to decline 30 percent and monitoring and mitigation plans are not required until after the decision is made.

The EPA criticized BLM’s environmental impact statement and once again recommended that BLM should not move to finalize the plan. The EPA predicted the proposed project would result in a least 10 days of visibility impairment at the Bridger Wilderness Area and noted that groundwater monitoring data suggest current drilling and production activities on the anticline has contributed to contamination of an aquifer used for drinking water.

Dave Freudenthal, Governor of Wyoming, response to proponents’ consideration of additional mitigation based on monitoring data presented at annual review meetings, “it is absurd to not acknowledge upfront that there will be a need for mitigation to protect the wildlife herds. There is no doubt that any habitat mitigation will not provide immediate relief to the wildlife need, and may in fact take several years for the habitat improvement to be effective.”

Studies on the effect of oil & gas development on wildlife

Bureau of Land Management Webpage on the Pinedale RMP

Denise Skinner