I was born in Wyoming 85 years ago. My earliest memories were made in a kaleidoscope of the special landscapes in Wyoming and Colorado, where my father owned a ranch with his brother. My love for those beautiful, wild places has guided my advocacy for our public lands. Unfortunately, I can never remember a time when conservation of those lands was the top priority.
Opinion
Those who lament they never have enough places to drill and scrape have a narrative about the huggers that love trees more than people. They can get vicious with their accusations. A local publisher castigated me for depriving our children of education dollars and the hospital of revenue because I legally opposed an exemption for a Williams project on a Bureau of Land Management Area of Critical Environmental Concern west of Rawlins.
The concept of stewardship using the best available technology has been rejected time and again. If those principles had been adopted, we would not be facing the choices we are now.
Our governor recently spoke against rules limiting methane releases, even though the producers in our state have egregiously spewed it into our atmosphere for years.
When the Atlantic Rim coal-bed methane area was developed, Yellowstone-like mud pots bubbled throughout the riparian areas there. But, that was only a small stream of the methane that sniffer technology found gushing into the atmosphere there. In fact, some joked that there could be a geyser of fire if a match was struck. Ironically, those seeps had been happening for years, and yet developers and regulators ignored the fractured geology of the area as they maximized drilling.
Wildlife there suffered huge losses from intense activity and development in their winter range. Vehicle traffic took the heaviest toll.
From Creston Junction to Grand Junction, wildlife was slaughtered. The barrow ditches were lined with elk, deer and antelope carcasses as the intense commercial traffic inundated the roadways. Oil and gas development looked like small cities from the air.
Huge storage areas built by Halliburton in Rock Springs were harbingers of the development planned for the landscape all the way to Pinedale. In fact, 75% of the deer were eradicated by development activity there. And most alarming was that the citizens of Pinedale were subjected to some of the worst air quality in the country.
For years, the Jim Bridger power plant has acidified the mountain ranges to the north. Studies suggest that acidity has changed some of the vegetation used by Big Horn sheep. When owners were sued, they were given limitations. But those limitations were evaded. State government, including our governor, have been complicit to this day in helping them continue to pollute.
And it took a complete failure of the Sinclair refinery, to bring about reform to an operation that was dropping birds passing through their air space. One petroleum engineer said, “Sinclair is extremely fortunate it has never had an inversion when emitting toxins, or humans would have been the victims.”
Few areas in the state have escaped. In Powder River, an incremental level of slow development was proposed but rejected by companies out to maximize their profits. Landowners and citizens are now living with the spoils.
When sage grouse reached the threatened and endangered stage Wyoming formed a coalition of land users to find better ways to protect the bird. Sadly, from the beginning, many of the participants continue to multiple use every square inch and continue to resist core area limitations. Recently, when the group proposed adjusting the core area boundaries, there was an outcry from private landowners who have been maximizing their income by partnerships with energy companies. While many have worked for years to be good stewards of the vegetative resource, this compromises their stewardship.
In the meantime, we have a population that believes they have a God-given right to drive everywhere across the landscape with their various vehicles. Unfortunately, that includes commodity and recreational users. Every year new roads are carved into new areas creating erosion and wildlife impacts. Even those who love the state are loving it to death with their excesses.
It is time to make conservation the top priority. Obviously, we are not choosing to be good stewards. Best management practices remain the prism for the unique and special resources in our state. The professionals who are working to ensure conservation need our support.
Barbara’s got a few years on me, but I have spent my adult life in or near my birthplace of Cody fighting for wildlife and natural resources. I consider myself a lifelong environmental activist . I’ve slogged the trenches at the front lines of battles over grizzlies, wolves, oil & gas , highways and subdivisions , gilded hobby ranchers (= New World Landed Aristocrats) , old time cattle barons, blood sportsmen, water thieves , global gold mine cabals, heartless corporations … the whole lot of them. It’s no fun being the local lightning rod for green issues. My rod has been struck so many times in five decades it’s burnt black.
Yet in all that time and all those battles, I have yet to come up with a good working definition of ” Conservation “. Everybody talks conservation , but when it comes to actually doing conservation we end up in the weeds upside down. So few victories; so little recovery and/or sustainability . If the words ” landscape scale ecology ” roll off your tongue, you will get run out of the room . Mention climate change, you get beat up on the spot and hot-branded a communist . (I learned that back in 1972 ).
So what exactly does a Conservation ethic look like in Wyoming ? I honestly don’t know. But not for lack of seeking it and trying to work the problem.
The best metaphor I can provide is the ancient South Asian parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Having never encountered an elephant the men blindly grope the huge beast , ending up declaring it to be six different animals.
In Wyoming, our blind men are all oldtimers from the State nursing home… a cowboy , a roughneck, a coal miner, a beet farmer, a motel owner, and a Freedom Caucus fighting Trump loving bareknuckle state legislator with too many head injuries over the years. Collectively , they are called the Stakeholders. They go about examining the carcass of the great hairy beast , which is named Conservation.
– except he carcass they are examining is a Wooly Mammoth. It’s been extinct in Wyoming since shortly after a few hundred upright walking hominids arrived here carrying atlatls and stone-tipped spears , as the Ice Age glaciers were receding ten or twelve millennia ago . You can see where this is going , even if they can’t.
Nobody alive today has ever really seen living Conservation . We only have oral history , legends, and mythology about it. Even before the Louisiana Purchase was inked 220 years ago, European trappers were already decimating the Beavers in Wyoming. It only got worse after the Fur Trade, which by the way was the worst environmental desecration ever perpetrated on Wyoming and interior North America, with extermination of Bison, Wolves, and Grizzlies etc a close second. Two centuries later we are only just now trying to fix those heinous landscape scale ecological mistakes while dealing simultaneously with Climate Change and 8 billion out-of-control upright walking hominids with nuclear weapons and a terminal illness pandemic caused by the pathogenic greed virus. We need a cure for blindness while we’re at it.
So I ask: who has a good working definition of ” Conservation ” as it can be applied to Wyoming ? I figure we have maybe fifty years max to get it right…
Best article I’ve read here to date. Thank you.
Stand your ground Barbara! I am pleased to inform you that you find yourself in the eminent company of Thoreau, Leopold, Abbey, Peacock, Terry Tempest-Williams, and other advocates on the right side of these issues.
Great article Barbara.
I had a High School English teacher who claimed every great read had a hidden meaning. If there is one here, it has to be that greed and sloth are the worst of the seven deadly sins.
Hooray for Barbara. She speaks the truth.
Conserve it or lose it! Those are the choices. Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Utah, have lost the wild places. There is nowhere to roam out here in PNW. The states sold all the forests to timber giants back in the 80’s and now you have to pay $300.00 per year for the 150 permits Weyerhauser so magnanimously allows to the quickest with the finger (Internet). Just like, Wyoming and hydrocarbons. Oil and gas only care about the bottom line and it isn’t pretty down there.
Fantastic and informative article! Thank goodness we have people like you to dig for the truth beyond what other agencies want to publish. I shudder to think were we would be without this type of insightful digging! Looking forward to more articles you write. Thank you!
Thank you Barbara . Let conservation and wildlife come first because we are the only voice they have .
It’s inspiring to know that you’re keeping up the good fight and making good trouble, Barbara. You’re a fierce warrior. Our irreplaceable public lands need your kind of passionate defense.
Thanks for your well written comment Barbara.
If we stop believing their (big oil) narrative, then living beings will have a chance.
Drinking the industry’s koolaid promise of ‘jobs, thriving ecomomies and wildlife mitigation practices’ is like believing that Columbus ‘discovered’ America.
Trying to imagine how our landscape was and could be again is difficult, but it’s time to give it a go.
Our Sublette Co. community meetings with the big oil players allowed some of us to speak our concerns, but comments fell on the deaf ears of industry and local .gov leaders. The big oil guys spoke with ‘forked tongues’. We were duped and treated as ‘third world’ countries. Our bad ozone days were terrible; our wildlife loss unconscionable, soil destruction stupendous and clean water polluted.
Big oil didn’t listen to WY Game & Fish…why would they?
Who was gonna regulate their activities? What rules do they play by anyway…? Not Wyoming’s rules, often not Federal rules or science standards, and sometimes not even their own best management practices. Big oil ‘bends’ the rules.
We need a referee! Call for a “Time out”! Slow this runaway extraction train down and take a look around.
Holiday Cheers to all,
Reet
Hurrah for Barbara. Her courage and wisdom are to be applauded. She speaks the truth and it is so sad that Wyoming people, who truly do love their wild country and their wildlife, always put those values last.
I moved to Wyoming in 1976. For as long as I have been here, Wyoming has been ruled by the Almighty GOCC (Gas, Oil, Coal, and Cows). I agree with Ms. Parsons. Let’s put another “C” on that. GOCCC (Gas, Oil, Coal, Cows, and Conservation).
Barbara, Thank you for speaking the truth.. I hope you, your family and friends have a Merry Christmas.
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Thanks for the article Miss Parsons. I whole heartedly agree, and hope that things will change. One thing to consider is the fact that our elected officials are against public land. All three of our representatives believe we have too much public land. Why do the voters keep voting them into office? Barrasso and Lummis want to use public land for single family homes. It’s no secret that Hageman wants to eliminate public land. Wake up people.
thank you for writing this. The lack of concern for the precious land we have in this state is appalling to me.
What a great letter! You point out many things that most either do not know, never consider, or are opposed to because they have a financial interest. There are some who are trying to show that gas fields are good for wildlife. Don’t believe that’s ever been proven. It’s good to hear from a lifelong resident and we need more of you stepping up.
In the name of “good jobs, ” people are willing to pollute the air and water we all need.
Our public lands that we find so important for recreation and multiple uses are under attack, even by the agencies that are supposed to protect them. The political pressure is huge and not in our best interest, but is created for those who reap the profits.
Thanks for your article.
The opinion offers a look back at at less than admirable deeds in the past. The largest polluting structure built in Wyoming was probably, the Lincoln Highway followed by it’s successor I-80. Should we all stop driving or give up the supply of goods to citizens? Why was it not mentioned? Petroleum spills in the state are most likely on I-80, more so than in the oil fields. Best available technology certainly has not solved all the problems, but hasn’t best available technology made things better? As better technology becomes available to support conservation, should we not use it?
I like the conservation efforts in the state of Wyoming. The Governor sits on the Oil and Gas CONSERVATION Commission. In general, the issue of conservation of wildlife and land is discussed frequently in newspapers going back into the territorial roots of Wyoming.
The opinion calls for conservation. But the issues of how to conserve are not part of the discussion. I love the ranch as an example of managing land and resources. All my rancher friends consider themselves conservationists. But my environmental friends in cities hate the cows as methane producing beasts. My friends on the left coast would have us plant more wind turbines that drop birds dead passing through that airspace whenever the wind blows. Or they would have us deprive the land of sunlight by planting acres and acres of solar panels where wild grasses grow today.
In the 1950’s, the nickname for Los Angeles was “Smell-A”. The pictures of that environment are at this link:
timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d
Smell-A is in our past. the smog and ozone disaster of the 1950s is long gone. It proves that using technology and some regulation can have improvements in the environment. If you have traveled the world like I have, you would know that in African cities and much of Asia, people see only brown skies. People in parts of India saw blue skies for the first time in their lives when Covid shut down the country. It is not an impossible problem.
Things are better today, at least the air in LA is better, than 70 years ago. North America has blue skies, fresh air, clean water that does not exist in many places in the world. And there is a lot of thought going into conservation. Solutions are clearly disputed and money does influence the conversation. And why should economics not be part of the conversation?
My friends to the left of me applaud the Paris accords as a means of saving the planet. I see those efforts as acceleration of pollution and slavery in under-developed countries and they have exemptions that wreak environmental disasters on the lands in those countries. The new “environmentalists” making huge profits benefiting from the Paris accords rearrangement of conservation efforts towards rich countries while exploiting the poor or oppressive regimes of the world. Watch them all fly to Dubai in private jets. The new economics seek to enslave people in the Congo to mine the minerals for cell phones, electric vehicles, Lithium batteries. Those raw materials move to China to be assembled by Uyghur slave labor. All powered by a new coal fired generation plant started every other week in China.
The finished products are purchased by consumers who are clueless about the environmental and social damages they inflict with the purchase of their EV or whatever green product. Of course, these are the same consumers who have no idea where their food comes from… to take it back to the ranch.
While the author points out conservation failures, it should be balanced with conservation success. The first national Park. The return of the Pronghorn antelope and the Black Footed Ferret. And many positive developments too numerous to count.
I appreciate Barbara Parsons perspective. She has a lifetime of watching and working in Wyoming. The solutions to conservation in Wyoming involve good dialog from a number perspectives. Asking questions and solving problems really requires good discussion. My Engineering background will tells me that in any process that requires energy, there will be disorder created. (Law of Entropy, AKA the Second Law of Thermodynamics) There will always be unintended consequences. Others come from perspectives I don’t understand. Education and real discussion should come to solutions rather than blaming mistakes of the past.
I do disagree with the ending paragraph. “We” may actually be choosing to be good stewards. I spoke with Governor Gordon on this just a week ago. And we sometimes do not need to rely just on professionals. There are good ideas and needed buying from all corners and the center of Wyoming. Many professionals have told Wyoming what to do… and continue to do so all the time without knowledge or understanding. I will leave you with this example from a Wyoming Senator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvQEjt-UIY
Merry Christmas
Good ideas can come from anyone. I agree. So, why hasn’t industry been utilizing those good ideas? Why have then been maximizing development instead of using best management practices? Because they want to maximize profits for their stock holders. That is why citizens and their elected officials need to require and enforce best management practices. But, I was told long ago by elected officials rules are often bent for commodity use because they constantly lobby for it. And I was further told that expecting laws and regulations to be enforced is naive. Only if citizens advocate constantly are they enforced. So, don’t be defensive. Commodity users often have poor track records.
“I love the ranch as an example of managing land and resources. All my rancher friends consider themselves conservationists. But my environmental friends in cities hate the cows as methane producing beasts. My friends on the left coast would have us plant more wind turbines that drop birds dead passing through that airspace whenever the wind blows. Or they would have us deprive the land of sunlight by planting acres and acres of solar panels where wild grasses grow today.”
I am sorry that is not what true lefties want in the way of conservation, but that is what ranchers have jumped onto because they do not want to face the real issue. Ranchers are propping up an invasive, inbred species that cannot survive with copious amounts of fencing, petroleum, killing every other species and politics.
The cow is a dead end and should be eradicated from the American Landscape in favor of the Bison.
Lefties like me would like to treat Ranchers better than society treated blue collar manufacturing workers when we stupidly sent those jobs overseas by paying them to give up the cow, but just like their adamant support for the conman from Queens, they refuse to see how far down a dead end road they have traveled.
Thank you Mr. Lewis for a rare and thoughtful perspective. Whether these folks agree or disagree with you, at least you have originals thoughts and well thought out perspectives on what needs done, instead of people pouncing on an industry or individual who is a foe because what they do for societies needs requires trade offs that are part of a market decision. A lot of them spend every day fighting somebody that if taken completely out of the equation, wouldn’t conserve anything given the big picture. Thank you again and Merry Christmas to you and all here!