WY Oil & Gas Lease Sale Comment Period Open!

A male greater sage-grouse stands in an open field

Comment Period Open for Upcoming Wyoming Oil and Gas Lease Sale

Comments due: November 15

Hi Friend,

The scoping information for Wyoming Bureau of Land Management's (the Bureau's) 2nd Quarter 2024 Oil and Gas Lease Sale is now available. According to the website and documents, the Wyoming Bureau is analyzing 20 parcels, totaling 11,250 in Wyoming. Comments are due November 15.

Rocky Mountain Wild has prepared a screen showing conflicts between the proposed parcels and important wildlife, wilderness, and other resources values.

An interactive map showing the parcels and selected conflicts is available here: https://rockymountainwild.org/oil_and_gas/wyoming. More information about this and other sales is available in the Upcoming Lease Sale Tracker Google Sheet.

Conservation conflicts identified for these parcels include:

Greater sage-grouse habitat: 1 parcel/720 acres are within priority habitat, another parcel has a small overlap with priority habitat, all the remaining acres are within general habitat
Important habitat for black-tailed prairie dog including potential black-footed ferret reintroduction site
Crucial winter range for mule deer and pronghorn
Community proposed wilderness area (Lysite Badlands)
One parcel is adjacent to a National Forest Inventoried Roadless Area (Downs)

Please take a moment and send your protests to the Bureau asking them to protect the wildlife and wild lands in this region by removing affected areas from the proposed parcels list. To submit a comment click Participate Now.

To date, we have helped defer more than 3 million acres of public land from oil and gas development! Together, we can save even more.

Additional Resources:

Oil & Gas Toolkit - including a guide from our Senior Conservation Biologist, Megan Mueller, on how to write technical comments about impacts to plan and animal species. Check it out under "Writing comments and Protects" here
Virtual Event Recording: Oil and Gas Lease Sale Comment Writing Workshop
Wyoming Oil and Gas Lease Sales webpage
Wyoming 2024 Second Quarter Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale eplanning page
"BLM seeks public comment for oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming" press release

Save Grouse!
Photograph of Chris surrounded by their illustrations of a Canada lynx, black-footed ferret, boreal toad, Gunnison sage-grouse, and little brown bat

Photograph of Chris surrounded by their illustrations of a Canada lynx, black-footed ferret, boreal toad, Gunnison sage-grouse, and little brown bat

Chris Talbot-Heindl (they/them)
Communications Director, Leadership Team
Rocky Mountain Wild

P.S. RMW screens each and every oil and gas lease sale in our region. Help fund this important work with a one-time or monthly donation here.

P.P.S. Get your tickets for our annual screening of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival — which we'll be hosting on November 9! We'll be offering this screening virtually and in-person in Denver this year and hope you can join us.

Header image: A male greater sage-grouse stands in an open field, courtesy of Bob Wick, Bureau of Land Management (public domain)
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