Of all of the efforts by the Biden administration to protect environmentally fragile lands, few have generated as much vitriol as a proposal that would block oil and gas drilling on 1.6 million acres of high desert sagebrush steppe in Wyoming.
A federal lands manager said she had received violent threats, prompting an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The 1,350-page proposal for managing 3.6 million of acres of federal land in Southwest Wyoming was years in the making but still took many Wyoming residents by surprise when the Bureau of Land Management made it public in August.
In addition to blocking energy development on nearly half that land, or 1.6 million acres, the plan would also restrict mining and some grazing.
Those areas include petroglyphs dating back some 200 years, North America’s largest sand dunes and migration corridors in the Red Desert for bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk.
Persons:
Biden, Biden’s, ”
Organizations:
Republican, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Land Management
Locations:
Wyoming, Pearl Harbor, China, Southwest Wyoming, North