The rolling, rockpile-strewn sagebrush that unfurls along more than 3 square miles of the Golden Triangle region appeared mostly devoid of life during a recent mid-November afternoon walk.
But brown, chalky spheres and cylinders of scat littering the landscape offered evidence of winged and hooved animals that call this ground home seasonally and throughout the year.
A mile or so southwest of the Lander Cutoff Road, this 2,194-acre Bureau of Land Management parcel is proposed for inclusion in an oil and gas lease sale set for June.
Wildlife biologists know the tract, labeled Parcel 0712 in the lease sale, as among the most biologically rich reaches of the sagebrush-steppe biome remaining anywhere on Earth.
Evidence of the claim is illustrated by the area’s abundance of greater sage grouse.
Just two miles from the boundary of Parcel 0712 is the sprawling Divide Lek, which retired Wyoming sage grouse coordinator Tom Christiansen frequents in the spring. He’s there to count male birds strutting to court mates, and there are a ton of them.
“It’s the largest lek on the planet, at least that I’m aware of,” Christiansen said. “The highest [count] was over 300. I don’t remember the exact number, but this last year [the count] was over 200.”
Parcel 0712’s proximity to the largest-known congregation of sage grouse, a struggling species, isn’t the only superlative descriptor of its wildlife value. This parcel amid the sagebrush sea also completely overlaps the main thread of the longest mule deer migration corridor known to Wyoming and the world.
Discovered by biologist Hall Sawyer relatively recently in 2011, the route is used by thousands of mule deer headed to summer in the Hoback Basin, with the record setters even venturing as far as eastern Idaho. Come winter, the animals are found in the Red Desert and lower reaches of the Green River Basin. To get to and from their seasonal ranges, these ungulates travel a 100-plus miles, passing through the Prospect Mountains along the foot of the Wind River Range and right through the middle of Parcel 0712.
Discussion is brewing in conservation circles about BLM’s proposed leasing of not just Parcel 0712, but tens of thousands of acres spread across five dozen parcels that intersect with Wyoming’s first three protected mule deer migration corridors. The lease auction set for June also could include tracts overlapping Wyoming’s first protected pronghorn corridor — a route that’s passed muster with state wildlife officials, but awaits a group of stakeholders and Gov. Mark Gordon’s approval.
All of the oil and gas leases slated for a June 2026 auction are in the early stages of the BLM’s vetting and approval process. Currently, they’re being “scoped,” subjected to public scrutiny and could still be pulled and never offered. Comments on the proposed parcels can be submitted online and are due by Monday. If they do get leased, an entirely separate environmental review process would await before approval is granted to actually drill.
Still, wildlife advocacy groups are questioning the wisdom of leasing the most vital sage grouse habitat remaining and areas in the middle of big game migration routes.
“Are we really okay with potentially sacrificing some of our most important wildlife habitat?” asked Alec Underwood, conservation director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “What kind of message does that send to all those who value wildlife and future generations?”
But oil and gas companies that have fueled Wyoming’s economy and enabled the state to save and invest an extraordinary amount of money have a starkly different interpretation.
“There’s no place that I’m going to say is a place that shouldn’t be leased,” said Steve Degenfelder, a land manager for Kirkwood Oil and Gas, which is the primary company expressing interest in drilling the Golden Triangle region.
Degenfelder anticipates leases in the Golden Triangle will come with “extensive surface occupancy stipulations.” Those restrictions combined with modern drilling technology, he said, can help ensure that nesting sage grouse, migrating mule deer and other wildlife aren’t extensively harmed.
“I’m confident that the BLM land managers and Game and Fish can work with the operator, whoever that is, to mitigate [wildlife impacts],” Degenfelder said.
Another well-known Wyomingite whose ranch is right across the Lander Cutoff from Parcel 0712 said he’d need to learn more before passing judgement on the prospects of leasing and drilling an area that others consider ecologically sacred.
“Would I be supportive of anything they decided to do? Certainly not,” said Jim Magagna, a longtime livestock lobbyist. “But on the other hand, I’m very open minded about getting a better understanding of the development potential. What would it look like?”
Without digging into his files, Degenfelder wasn’t sure if Kirkwood specifically nominated Parcel 0712. But the Casper-based company has long shown an interest in Golden Triangle-area parcels and it’s one of the outfits that has been leasing ground there for years over the objections of conservation groups. The nearly 20,000 Golden Triangle acres slated for auction in June were nominated in 2021, Degenfelder said. The parcels were initially going to be offered in June 2022, but then a consortium of environmental groups led by The Wilderness Society sued and were successful.
BLM’s proposal to lease the area again in 2025 is especially controversial because the standing federal land-use plan — the Biden-era Rock Springs Resource Management Plan — explicitly doesn’t allow it. Officials with the federal agency’s Wyoming office, who’ve been furloughed for weeks during the government shutdown, have been unreachable to explain the discrepancy, though notably, they’ve started the process of revising the current plan.
Degenfelder, meanwhile, points to President Donald Trump’s “national energy emergency” declaration as an explanation for BLM proposing to lease an area designated as off limits.
“It was similar to a War Powers Act,” he said of the declaration. “That could very well be the reason why.”
Others remain skeptical of leasing in the Golden Triangle. Christiansen, the former Game and Fish sage grouse corridor, said he’ll be watching to see how his old employer, the state of Wyoming, responds to BLM’s proposal.
“If the state chooses to support the lease sale, it puts public trust in state policies like the [sage grouse] executive order at risk, because they’re supporting an illegal action,” Christiansen said. “If we support actively disregarding the rule of law at the state level, the public can’t support or can’t trust state policy, either.”
During the 2019 debate over oil and gas leasing in the Golden Triangle, state wildlife officials did not advocate for “no surface occupancy” stipulations, pointing toward the state’s grouse policy, which they deemed adequate. Likewise, Wyoming’s ungulate migration policy also doesn’t call for no-disturbance stipulations outside of “bottlenecks” — and there are none in that portion of the designated Sublette Mule Deer Migration and proposed Sublette Pronghorn Migration.
Although sage grouse were nowhere to be seen during WyoFile’s recent visit to Parcel 0712, that’s likely because the chicken-sized birds have reached the time of year when they are less dispersed, and instead concentrated in flocks that can number in the hundreds.
“They’re gathering now in their winter flocks,” Christiansen said. “It’s harder to find a group, but when you find a group, it’s going to be a lot larger.”
They’ll stay in the area of Parcel 0712, the adjacent record-setting Divide Lek and in the surrounding reaches of the best sagebrush habitat left on Earth, which are all part of a “broad winter complex,” the biologist said. Then come next spring — a month or two before the BLM’s planned lease sale — they’ll start strutting.
I’m still wondering how the term “conservation” gets such a bad rap.
Conservation is the careful protection, preservation, and sustainable management of Earth’s natural resources, including wildlife, habitats, water, soil, and energy, to prevent waste, destruction, or extinction, ensuring these vital assets remain available for future generations while maintaining ecological balance and human well-being. It involves both wise use (like energy efficiency) and active protection (like habitat restoration) to combat threats from pollution, climate change, and overexploitation.
The “mitigation” for drilling in such an important area is questionable. All one has to is look at the results of the mitigation for drilling on the Mesa.
A few years back I spent much of the day with one of multi-generation ranchers in this exact area (which is beyond spectacular), and he informed that his sheep operation relies on the same quite the wild animals need to raise their young ones. It allows mothers to stay in one place and listen for danger. Noise is a huge threat to our wildlife herds. There is no way this kind of development wouldn’t have an very negative impact over time. I would fight just as hard against solar or wind development. And that sage grouse population by the Jackson Airport is LONG GONE. If we want healthy wild animals in Wyoming, we need to protect them from people like Mr. Degenfelder. The Golden Triangle is a Wyoming State natural and historic treasure.
Junk propaganda
Adding to this discussion is the proposed director to head the Bureau of Land Management, Steve Pearce, a former U.S. Representative from a district in which I resided in New Mexico. His affiliation and devotion to oil and gas was a game changer when he ran for governor of NM and then senator, he lost both races. He was determined to decrease the acreage of the Organ Mountain/Desert Peaks National Monument outside of Las Cruces. But conservationists rallied and ended his scam. If he gets approved, it will be a rocky road to keep our lands public and out of the hands of the mineral industries.
The notion that wildlife management/conservation and energy production cannot go hand in hand is a bald-faced lie. These so called “conservationists” use misinformation, false narrative, and deceitful “statistics” to push their green agenda. I have witnessed sage grouse mating rituals on the edge of drilling and pumping sites for years. Same with deer, antelope, and elk migrating through drilling, pumping, and gathering stations (not to mention through herds of cattle). The first time I flew into the Jackson airport (1984ish) we saw sage grouse mating on the edge of the tarmac. Please take the time to become truly educated before falling for the hysterics!
More of the same. When all anyone can see is a dollar bill in front of their eyes, nothing else matters. Wildlife that has zero say in the matter always loses to government and corporate greed. Sad.
Mike: Good.
BLM’s has their priorities straight–straight out of Trump’s butt! Neither he nor Burgum nor Steven Pearce (Trump’s nominee to head BLM) care one damn bit about mule deer, sage grouse, or any other wildlife that interferes with the maximization of fossil fuel energy companies’ profits. With these guys in charge, the Endangered Species Act will go extinct!
The biggest problem is that we fail to learn from the past and adopt the regulations that won’t impact wildlife. I don’t believe there’s enough of them. Sage-grouse and mule deer both need landscapes that are undeveloped. In the case of this herd (Sublette Mule Deer) it has already had major impacts on the northern of its range from the Anticline Fields. I think we should evaluate, cumulative impacts to wildlife across the state to deter the impacts we’ve already had, even with the regulations in place.
An interesting turn of phrase from Degenfelder saying wildlife won’t be “extensively harmed.” So he admits there will be harm. In time there will be nothing left of Wild Wyoming.
As a non-resident that has never been to Wyoming, but is planning to hunt mule deer there in a couple years, this is just saddening. I’m sad that we value wildlife so little. I’m sad that corporate profit comes before all else. I’m sad that we don’t see value in anything unless we can make a dollar off of it. At the rate we’re going, by the time my daughter is my age, the wildlife situation is going to look dire in a lot of places.
You notice that it’s a big deal when it’s an oil lease, if it were solar or wind not a word would be said.
Yep, wind and solar farms require far more land than a few strategically located drill pads would be cheered on as saving the planet, and every other progressive buzz-phrase imaginable would be used to virtue signal the so called benefits of intermittent energy.
I am not a tree hugger, but I believe in this instance, conservation outweighs any economic benefit. There are plenty of places to find fossil fuels and this site should be removed from further consideration.
An adage from an international culture observer held that “Americans know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” We are renown for pursuit of money through short sighted exploitation of natural resources, leaving behind a much diminished whole cloth of life and world. Are there those among us who do differently?
Personally, I’d like to see what we’ve lost statewide to mineral development.
This totally blows my mind and just shows where Wyoming’s priorities lie and what little we’ve learned from the Jonah and Anticline Fields.
Anything that has to do with current administration should be investigated thoroughly regarding Wyoming public lands. The drill baby drill rhetoric is alarming. Wyoming citizens should be able to vote on these issues.
Yet another example that Kirkwood Oil & Gas, Steve Kirkwood and Steve Degenfelder don’t give a rats ass about Wyoming’s wildlife or avoiding critical sage grouse habitat and big game migration corridors. Wasn’t it Steve Kirkwood that leased a state parcel for oil and gas development in a critical migration corridor choke point near Pinedale last year? If you heard Steve Degenfelder’s testimony recently before the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission when the Commission was considering advancing the Sublette Pronghorn Migration Corridor Proposal to the Governor, you would have been shocked by the complete disregard Kirkwood Oil & Gas has for our irreplaceable wildlife resources. Degenfelder made it clear that it’s all about making money for his boss, Steve Kirkwood. They could consider leasing other parcels, couldn’t they? But they won’t given their greed!
Give me the pros and cons! Aren’t there already highways, power transmission lines, fences for livestock and property destruction? If so shouldn’t we tear that all out too? Now let’s approach it from another angle. Why not put up 10,000 wind turbines instead? They are so pretty. They’ve littered south eastern Wyoming with those. One way or another they will find a way to produce the energy. Pick your poison.
I don’t know, perhaps you can tell me, but are there wind turbines in those critical areas?
Yes.
This needs to be protected, a few miles is far too close. Seriously, can humans do something good for the ecosystem in Wyoming please.
socialism
Where?
Could you give some explanation of what you mean by “socialism”?