Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Environmentalists are criticizing a centerpiece of the Bush administration's 2007 Interior Department budget, which offers $22 million for habitat restoration in Nevada and other Western states, as providing cover for damaging oil and gas drilling to continue in the West.
Craig Harper, a public lands specialist at the National Resources Defense Council, said the help is too little, too late from an administration that has allowed thousands of new oil wells in the Rocky Mountain back country.
"They've hammered these areas and now they're going to go back and do a bit of planting," he said. "I applaud their restoration efforts, but it's not enough, and the companies should be paying for it."
The number of onshore energy production permits has doubled since President Bush took office.
Administration officials rolled out the initiative this week, saying they hope to restore habitat in some damaged public lands. They say the stepped-up production increase is needed to reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil.
Environmental organizations question the inclusion of Nevada on the list of seven states to get habitat restoration funds.
Oil and gas leases have increased on Nevada public lands as the high price of crude enticed wildcatters to try tapping the state's fabled underground reserves.
But the state's few dozen wells pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of wells in production in the Rocky Mountain states. That area accounts for much of the increase in onshore oil and gas production that has seen government royalties double from 2001 to 2006.
The new restoration funds going to Nevada will be used in the northeast corner of the state to repair habitat for the imperiled sage grouse, a homely bird whose potential listing as an endangered species threatens to halt energy production and other uses of public lands.
The sage grouse lives in sagebrush that has been decimated by frequent wildfires in the Great Basin region, which includes Nevada, eastern Oregon and western Idaho. The three states, all without much energy production, will share $1.9 million to restore 23,000 acres of sage grouse habitat.
Another $13.1 million of the initiative's funding will go toward habitat restoration in energy-producing states - Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and south-central Idaho. And $7 million will go to the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Environmentalists see the initiative as an effort to keep oil operations thriving by keeping the sage grouse off the endangered species list.
Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist at the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Wyoming, said saving the sage grouse habitat in Nevada doesn't help the ecosystem in his state, where not only the bird, but other species, are threatened by oil and gas drilling.
He called the initiative "just a way of pretending you're dealing with wildlife habitat while you allow the reason to continue."
"It's a ploy to distract the public from the massive scale of habitat destruction that is happening to benefit the oil and gas industry, to speed oil and gas development."
An attempt to list the bird failed in 2005, but environmentalists vow to try again.
The Bureau of Land Management is "really freaked out about the listing of the sage grouse," said Noah Matson, director of the federal lands program at Defenders of Wildlife. "Without the sage grouse listing, they can pursue energy development unfettered."
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne highlighted protection of the sage grouse as he announced the initiative this week.
Celia Boddington, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management, said keeping the bird from being listed is "part of this effort. But caring for the environment and developing energy are not mutually exclusive."
Oil and gas production now encompasses 12 million acres in the West, with 24 million additional acres approved for drilling. Wyoming's natural gas reserves alone can heat 4 million homes annually.
Environmental experts say the industrial operations deep in the wild result in fragmented wildlife corridors, noise and degraded air and water.
They say the Bush administration should have managed oil and gas drilling better before it opened lands to development under the president's 2001 energy plan. They want improved industry practices - many of which the American Petroleum Institute supports but says are costly and don't work in every environment.
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