Editorial: Digging a hole for wildlife protection

Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005 | 7:19 a.m.

Sounding an alarm over high winter heating bills, a U.S. senator from Montana wants to lift seasonal bans on oil and gas drilling in areas of the West where wildlife struggles to survive in winter.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., conducted an October hearing of the Senate Appropriations Interior subcommittee into whether the Bureau of Land Management should relax restrictions that prevent drilling in certain regions during winter and spring. These "seasonal stipulations" are to prevent stressing wild animals when winter food is scarce and to protect the sage grouse's habitat in spring.

The BLM can grant temporary exemptions and has granted nearly 90 percent of such requests for one gas-rich area of Wyoming since 2001, The Denver Post reported this week. That region's deer population has since dropped 46 percent.

But the issue affects more than Wyoming deer. The BLM expects to receive 9,000 to 10,000 new applications for gas and oil drilling across the West in each of the next two years. And Burns is the second lawmaker to propose removing the ban. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pomobo, R-Calif., proposed a similar measure earlier this year. It didn't make it to a floor vote.

Lawmakers, industry officials and the BLM -- which is preparing a study of year-round drilling's long-term effects -- should devise plans for increasing gas and oil during the months it already is allowed.

And they should stop exploiting Americans' fears of high heating bills to try to justify endangering wild animals at their most vulnerable time of the year.