Dry, hot weather is driving wildfires in the West. Flickr photo by Anthony Citrano.

A wildfire driven by drought, wind and record-breaking heat has killed two people, destroyed an estimated 360 homes and blackened at least 15,700 acres in rural subdivisions north of Colorado Springs. If  the preliminary numbers hold up, the fire will surpass last summer’s Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs as Colorado’s most destructive in terms of lost homes.

And it’s early in the wildfire season, which grows longer every year in the West. Wildfires erupted even earlier this spring in New Mexico and California. People and wildlife are still dealing with the fallout from last year’s wildfires — property losses, important trout waters choked by ash and erosion flowing down barren mountainsides.

A seemingly never-ending wildfire season has become the new norm in the West. The changing climate has unleashed  record-breaking heat and drought in the Rockies. The National Weather Service reported that on June 12, Denver recorded its earliest 100-degree temperature on record. The previous record was June 14, 2006.

Unrelenting drought, heat

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that much of New Mexico is in extreme to exceptional drought. Colorado ranges from moderate to exceptional, portrayed as dark red blotches on the U.S. map. Climate change is already transforming the landscape, threatening endangered species, stressing fish and other wildlife and affecting hunting and fishing opportunities. Last summer, anglers across Colorado were urged to forgo casting their lines in some spots because of the pressure fish were under due to the extreme heat. The full impact of a wildfire that blasted through northern Colorado’s Poudre Canyon last year is still unclear.  State wildlife biologists are monitoring the effects of erosion on the Cache la Poudre River, a favorite trout fishery.

Hunters and anglers, who are on the ground, walking through the backcountry and wading through streams, are making the connections between what they see happening to the landscape and fish and wildlife habitat with our energy choices. Todd Tanner, founder of the sportsmen’s advocacy group Conservation Hawks, calls climate change “the biggest threat we’ve ever faced.”

Warmer water and erosion from wildfires are threatening fisheries in the Rockies. Photo by Lew Carpenter

Smoke from the fires near Colorado Springs,  Canon City in central Colorado and in Rocky Mountain National park hangs over the Front Range, obscuring the view of the mountains from Longs Peak in the north to Pikes Peak in the south.

And it’s not even summer yet.

Read more about the threats to wildlife in the report “Wildlife in a Warming World” and learn about ways we can confront the climate crisis.

Take Action

Speak up for wolverines! Tell Congress to pass legislation that will preserve habitat for wolverines and other wildlife>>

These prairie winecups are among the plants native to Colorado. Photo by the National Wildlife Federation.

Whatever the reason, Denver-area gardeners seem to be increasingly interested in indigenous flowers, grasses and shrubs. Every May for the past seven years, the Boulder office of the National Wildlife Federation has been a key stop for those gardeners. The staff sponsors what’s believed to be a one-of-a-kind event in the Denver area – an all-native plant sale.

Ranger Rick helps one of the volunteers at the 2012 National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Sale. NWF Photo

NWF: What are some of advantages of native plants?
Eirin: There are quite a few advantages. I would say first and foremost is the habitat value. There are certain native insects that will take nectar only from the native wild flowers. Secondly, I would say the plants do not need the increased fertilizer. They do not need, for the most part, high irrigation. Since they are native plants, they can exist on very low fertilizer, just what exists in the soil, and also exist on the precipitation we get in this area. And the native plants are perennials, so you’ll get to enjoy them year after year. They’re not something you’re going to have to pull up every season. They’re going to pop up every spring.

NWF: How do native plants benefit wildlife?
Eirin: When you plant natives, you’re creating an insectary. What I mean by that is you’re creating a place for beneficial insects to reside that are either going to pollinate our vegetables or fruit trees or they’re actually going to eat or kill some of the pests in our garden. We have 17 species at the plant sale that are honey-bee attractors. We also have hummingbird-attractor plants, plants that are good for butterflies and also plants that are wonderful nesting habitat for our local bird species.

NWF: Do native plants require less water than non-native plants?
Eirin: If they’re planted in the micro-climate that they’re supposed to be planted in, they exist on what is termed moderate to low water. That’s water two or fewer times a week.

NWF: Is interest in native plants growing?
Eirin: I think so. I’ve only lived in Denver for three years, but since (the drought in) 2002, with the low water use, people began to get interested in low-water-use plants and that naturally turned toward some of our indigenous plants in the area. It’s so important for us to be using native plants to show the landscape vernacular that used to exist here – the prairies, the grasslands. The native grasses are wonderful habitat and foundation plants in the landscape. The keystone species to our short grass prairie is blue grama and it’s host to a Colorado alpine butterfly. A taller grass species, big bluestem, is host to two rare skipper butterflies.

NWF: Does Denver plant native vegetation in its parks?
Eirin: We have the more traditional parks that I think a lot of people are familiar with, which has the Kentucky bluegrass. Starting in 2006, conversion sites were defined, starting with four parks in the city. They were converted to short-grass prairie. So, there’s been a large movement. Now, just in my district, I have about 350 acres of native short-grass prairie areas. We’re going to be seeing less and less Kentucky blue grass and more native areas being planted.

The columbine is one of the most popular native plants of Colorado gardeners. Photo by John Gale.

Outside Denver? You Can Still Go Native!

Learn more about choosing and cultivating native plants, then turn your yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat ® site. This month only, Garden For Wildlife Month, NWF will plant a native tree in your honor when you certify your property.

Students at Copper Mesa Elementary School raise the school’s Eco-Schools USA Green Flag. Photo by Judith Kohler

“Way to go Cougars!” a student at Copper Mesa Elementary in Highlands Ranch exclaimed as the gym full of students cheered.

The occasion was a kind of pep assembly at the Denver-area school, but it was unlike any pep assembly I remember attending. The kids weren’t cheering for a sports team; they were excited about earning a Green Flag, the highest honor in the Eco-Schools USA program. The students didn’t sing the school fight song; they recited Copper Mesa’s “eco-code.”

“You’re part of an elite group of schools and students,” said Ann Morgan, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Rocky Mountains and Prairies Regional Center.

Ann Morgan, executive director of the regional NWF office, presents a Green Flag to Flagstone Elementary School.

The two Douglas County schools are the first in Colorado to earn Green Flags and as of April 25, were just the 14^th and 15^th nationwide.

Students at both schools were clothed in several different shades of green to mark the special day. During an outdoor assembly, Flagstone students waved green paper flags attached to pencils. Parents stood around the outside of the group, taking pictures and clapping along with the kids when the Eco-Schools flag was hoisted up the flagpole.

The raising of the Green Flags followed a lot of work by students and school staffs. Copper Mesa has saved more than 127,000 kilowatt hours of electricity the past three years with the help of energy audits. The school has saved about $400 by using both sides of copy paper and decreased trash pick-ups from five to two days a week.

Flagstone has reduced the amount of waste left from school lunches. The school provides vegetables for the community from its garden and has built and located bluebird houses to enhance the birds’ population.

Flagstone Elementary studets cheer as their school is awarded the Green Flag. Photo by Judith Kohler

“They found I left my light on once and they haven’t let me forget it,” she said.

Members of Copper Mesa’s student “Green Team” said the work has been worth it.

“We’ve had to be like a team,” 10-year-old Hailey Merrill said. “It’d be really cool if all the other schools could do it, too.”

One of six beavers caught in an oil spill at a Utah state park rests at a wildlife center. Photo by the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah.

Unfortunately, the dams couldn’t protect the beavers. The diesel flowing from a break in a pipeline covered beavers, including a mother and her two kits. Volunteers and staffers at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah are working to save six of the animals caught in the spill discovered March 18 in wetlands at Willard Bay State Park. All the beavers are improving, although two yearlings exposed to the oil for days are still in rough shape.

“Wildlife officials… had to dismantle the large lodge ‘stick by stick’ to gain access to the chamber where the mother and her two kits were hiding. The environment of the chamber was heavy with fuel vapors and all three beavers were covered in the toxic liquid,’’ according to staff at the wildlife center. The animals inhaled and ingested diesel, said DaLyn Erickson-Marthaler, the center’s executive director and wildlife specialist. Some of the beavers lost a lot of their fur and have abcesses.

At least 21,000 gallons of diesel have spilled from the Chevron pipeline that runs from Salt Lake City refineries to Spokane, Wash. Media reports indicate this is Chevron’s third oil pipeline spill in Utah in fewer than three years. Utah isn’t the only place where wildlife is suffering or facing threats because of oil and gas spills and leaks.

In Arkansas

Meanwhile, nearly 1,500 miles to the east, another oil spill is taking its toll on wildlife and their two-legged neighbors. The National Wildlife Federation’s Miles Grant and Geralyn Hoey have provided frontline reports about the tar sands oil spill from  Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Ark.  As of April 8, 139 creatures had been recovered.

Speak up for wildlife at risk from tar sands — Tell the White House to say NO! to Keystone XL.

In Colorado

Staffers at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah tends to one of the beavers caught in an oil spill. Photo by the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah.

The contamination is near Parachute Creek, which supplies irrigation water and eventually runs into the Colorado River – a major source of water for communities, fish and wildlife. So far, state and federal environmental experts say the contamination hasn’t been found in the creek. Oil spills in 2006 and 2011 in Spring Creek, a tributary of the North Platte River in Colorado’s North Park area, have poisoned the creek bed, according to state and federal records. Colorado-based Lone Pine Gas Inc. has a permit allowing it to discharge hundreds of thousands of gallons of treated liquid waste into the creek. North Park is highly prized by hunters and anglers for its gold-medal fisheries and abundant wildlife, including mule deer, pronghorns, moose and greater sage-grouse. It’s home to the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge.

Isn’t this supposed to be refuge?

One of the six beavers soaked in an oil spill rests against the side of a bathtub while the water runs. Photo by the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah.

When drilling and the location of pipelines are considered, when oil and gas regulations are written and updated, wildlife must be factored in. It’s clear that what’s good for wildlife and the environment is also good for people. Just think of those beaver dams.

“The irony of it all is the beavers’ dam absolutely contained the oil spill and saved the bay,”  Erickson-Marthaler. “But they’ve certainly paid a heavy price.”

Speak up for wildlife TODAY by urging President Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all. And watch our new video on the impacts tar sands oil poses to wildlife from Canada to the Gulf coast of Texas and beyond.

A seep of oil-like substances adjacent to a western Colorado natural gas plant is just 60 feet from a creek that flows into the Colorado River (pictured). Photo by Judith Kohler

“It’s possible we may have dodged a bullet this time, but this should be seen as a wake-up call.”

That’s the reaction of National Wildlife Federation attorney Michael Saul to an ongoing, underground leak of what’s variously been described as oil, an oil-like substance or a mix of hydrocarbons.

The leak, or seepage, measures 200 by 170 feet and is near a natural-gas processing plant in western Colorado. The seep is just 60 feet from Parachute Creek, which flows into the Colorado River.

The source and cause of the leak are unclear. It’s not even clear exactly what is spreading underground. Workers from Williams, which owns the gas plant and pipelines in the area, discovered the leak during excavation work March 8.

The Colorado Department of Natural Resources says about 5,900 gallons of oil and more than 100,000 gallons of water had been recovered by Wednesday morning. Crews are digging up a large-diameter gas pipeline.

State and federal environmental agencies say so far, no contamination has reached the creek.

Still Waiting

That’s the good news. The bad news is five years after Colorado regulators said they would look at establishing statewide buffers around waterways, nothing has happened.

The state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission approved 300-foot setbacks from gold-medal fisheries and waters containing native cutthroat trout as part of an overhaul of oil and gas regulations in 2008. That’s a relatively small volume in a state that is the headwaters of rivers that provide water for states across the region.

Left hanging was the issue of how far back oil and gas wells and related infrastructure should be from other riparian areas. It was supposed to be addressed by a committee representing various interests.

“We’re still waiting,” said Suzanne O’Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation.

 The spill near the town of Parachute “is Exhibit A for the commission to begin the long-delayed work of establishing riparian setbacks,” Saul said.

Spills Happen

It’s not as if oil and gas spills are rare events in Colorado. An analysis by the Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance showed energy companies reported nearly 1,000 oil and gas spills in a three-county area in western Colorado from 2001 to 2010. Garfield County is the site of the latest incident. The counties are home to some of the nation’s largest mule deer and elk herds and native cutthroat trout. Hunting, fishing, tourism and recreation are big contributors to the area’s economy.

The Denver Post reported in 2011 that oil and gas spills were occurring at a rate of seven every five days that year and had resulted in the release of more than 2 million gallons of diesel oil, drilling wastewater and chemicals that contaminated soil and water.

A lack of statewide standards for riparian areas in Colorado mean wells like this one in North Park can be sited near waterways. Photo by Barbara Vasquez

Required setbacks and better monitoring of surface and groundwater quality are crucial to protecting keeping Colorado waterways clean and safe for people, fish and wildlife.

“This might have been detected sooner with better monitoring. We don’t know how long this has being going on,” Saul said.

Flickr:USFWS/Rocky Mountain-Prairie Region. The black-footed ferret is one of North America’s rarest species.

Now, one of the rarest animals in North America could be on the verge of a comeback. The next big step is buy-in from private landowners who typically cringe at the mention of endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hoping ranchers and others will agree to host black-footed ferrets in exchange for assurance they won’t face restrictions that hinder their operations.

Foster program for ferrets?

Several federal agencies will offer assistance (including financial help) to participants in the proposed Safe Harbor program, kind of the conservation equivalent of foster homes for ferrets. The plan is undergoing an environmental assessment.

 ”We’ve got to have wider geographical distribution of colonies of black-footed ferrets. The only way we’re go to achieve that is with the help of landowners,” said Tom Dougherty, who first got involved with the recovery program when he was with the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

Dougherty later became a regional director and a senior adviser with the National Wildlife Federation. He represented NWF on an advisory committee to the team overseeing ferret recovery.

Ferrets have been released – and some have been born in the wild – on federal, tribal, state and private lands in the Intermountain West and Plains. The recovery program’s goal is a population of 3,000.

According to the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team, the biggest obstacle to ferret recovery today is lack of suitable reintroduction sites.

Friendly environs for ferrets

Gary Walker, who ranches near Pueblo, Colo., thinks his land is more than suitable. His cattle ranch is stocked with thousands of acres of ferrets’ favorite food – prairie dogs. He’d like to see ferrets take a big bite out of the rodent’s population.

Walker also prefers working with – not against – nature.

 ”I believe in nature and native predation,’’ Walker said. “It’s nonsense to me why we would be raising all these ferrets in captivity and not be introducing them into the wild, letting mother nature do what it is intended to do.”

Terry Fankhauser agrees. The executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association say his group “is on board” with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to find landowners who will host ferrets. It’s a turnaround for an organization that in the late 1990s backed a bill requiring legislative approval to reintroduce an endangered or threatened species not currently in the state. That followed on the heels of the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s release of lynx to restore the long-haired mountain cat in the state.

The cattlemen’s group is now backing legislation that would authorize reintroduction of black-footed ferrets on the property of consenting owners.

“Landowners can participate and should participate in the conservation of these species,’’ Fankhauser said.

Black-footed ferrets were on the edge of extinction in 1987, with only 18 ferrets left. Today, captive breeding programs are slowly helping the species recover. This photo of a mother and her four kits was taken at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Center in Colorado

Fankhauser would like to see similar programs aimed at keeping wildlife off the Endangered Species List in the first place.

Dougherty doesn’t understand the opposition the Fish and Wildlife Service plan has met in some places, including Colorado’s neighboring state of Kansas. He thinks it’s in everybody’s best interests to restore a threatened or endangered species to viable population levels, eliminating the special protections that can restrict land uses.

“If you told me 20 years ago that we had a chance in recovering the black-footed ferret, I’m not sure I would’ve believed it,” he added. “Now, I actually think we’re on the threshold of recovering the species.”

Hunters and anglers are seeing the fallout of climate change firsthand. Photo by Lew Carpenter.

“We’re out there. We’re outside hiking the mountains and wading the rivers and wandering the landscapes. When the snow comes late and the elk stay up in the high country until the hunting season is over, we notice. When the beetles overrun a new piece of country and the forest begins to die off we notice. When our rivers are low and warm because of drought and our biologists have to close it down because the fish are stressed from high water temperatures and low oxygen levels, we notice. And when the smoke from October forest fires fills our alleys and blocks out the mountains to the point where we can’t hunt or fish, we notice.”

Tanner explained during a recent press event for a new National Wildlife Federation report, Wildlife in a Warming World: Confronting the Climate Crisis, that he has experienced all those things “right here in Montana.’’  As chairman of the advocacy group Conservation Hawks, he works with other hunters and anglers to educate sportsmen and sportswomen about climate change and make sure that sportsmen’s voices are heard on “the biggest threat we’ve ever faced.”

“Hunters and anglers are starting to realize that we’re about to get slammed,” Tanner said. “Climate change is going to trash everything we care about, the places we hunt and fish, our outdoor traditions and our sporting heritage, our families, our kids.”

For Tanner, climate change is a moral issue. “Somebody has to stand up and say that this is wrong, that we can’t turn our backs on our sons and our daughters and our grandkids. Somebody has to stand up for our values in traditions and for the natural world that we cherish.”

Tanner believes hunters and anglers are the ones to lead the charge because of their numbers, because so many of them are conservative-leaning and can speak to politicians of all stripes – and because they’re on the front lines of the landscape-transforming, climate-change-driven events. He believes sportsmen can help persuade the people who need to be at the table – conservative politicians – to take a seat.

“There are 37 million hunters and anglers in the United States,” he said. “We are the 800-pound gorilla in the group, the one that nobody talks about because we haven’t really made any noise yet.”

A fire-ravaged mountainside and discolored, beetle-infested trees in Colorado’s Poudre Canyon are stark rememinders of climate change’s effects. NWF photo by Judith Kohler.

That will change as more sportsmen make the connection between what they’re seeing in the fields, mountains and streams and climate change, Tanner said.

“And I think what you’re going to see more and more is hunters and anglers who tend to be conservative, who for the most part are a little bit more traditional than maybe some other segments of society, pushing on politicians, particularly red-state politicians, to get involved saying, ‘This impacts me deeply and if you care about me and my family, if you care about our traditions the way you said that you have in the past, then you need to change your mind on this. You need to go to the table, you need to address this.’”

Want to help? Share this post with your friends who hunt and fish.

Colorado’s Blue River. Photo by Lew Carpenter

Fish and wildlife are feeling the effects:

• Sagebrush and other plants that pronghorns and mule deer depend on in the winter are in bad shape in spots.
• Water levels in some reservoirs and streams are low following a dry spring and record heat this summer. Nearly all the fish in a northeastern Colorado reservoir died in September after strong winds churning the water further depleted the already low oxygen levels.
• A drop in the number of pheasants on Colorado’s eastern plains has resulted in one of the worst-ever hunting seasons.
• White-tail deer in South Dakota have been hit hard by a disease that causes extensive internal hemorrhaging. Biologists say there are more cases of epizootic hemorrhagic disease during droughts because the midge fly, which spreads it, and deer are concentrated at water sources. South Dakota has offered hunters refunds on their licenses because of the outbreak.
• In Wyoming, hunters have reported seeing pronghorns so thin that their ribs are visible.

“In a lot of areas, we haven’t had any growth, no forage production at all,” Jason Hunter,  a wildlife supervisor with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, told the Casper Star-Tribune.

The vegetation isn’t much better in Colorado, but state wildlife biologists say the mule deer, pronghorns and elk appear to be in good condition. ”For now in Colorado, other than localized issues, we’re not seeing big-game problems,” state Parks and Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said.

The drought-damaged forage is a concern, Hampton added, but the unseasonably dry, warm weather has actually eased the problem a bit. The warmer weather has allowed the animals to stay at higher elevations longer so the lower-elevation range, where the forage is in sub-par condition, isn’t being grazed as much as it normally would be.

“It’s not optimal. If the cycle continues on this path and we end up with a prolonged drought, that’s where we get much more worried about range damage.”

Pheasant on the plains

No one knows how long it will take for the Cache la Poudre River in northern Colorado to recover from the sediment and other contaminants eroding from mountain slopes left barren by an 87,000-acre wildfire in June. The fallout from a 2002 wildfire killed about 70 percent of the adult fish along the South Platte River after storms swept mud and debris into the river.

“Only now can we say the Platte’s back to where it had been in the past,” Hampton said.

Little relief in sight

Near-term forecasts don’t promise much relief in the Rockies. Dry, warm weather remains on the horizon as the U.S. is on track for its warmest year ever, heightening concerns about climate change.

John Ellenberger has lived for more than two decades in western Colorado. He knows the countryside well from his work as a game warden and later the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s big game manager. He remembers the droughts of the late ‘70s, late ‘90s and 2002-2003.

“This one is shaping up to be as bad or worse than any of them,” Ellenberger said.

The Grand Junction area, where Ellenberger lives, averages only about 8.5 inches of moisture annually. The high-desert landscape has received a scant 3.25 inches so far this year.

Fellow hunters and state wildlife officers agree the deer, elk and pronghorns don’t seem to have been affected by the drought to this point, Ellenberger said. However, he worries about what lies ahead.

“If you don’t have the forage production in the fall on the winter ranges for these animals, the females can’t support themselves and a developing fetus,” he said. “I think you definitely could see decreases in reproduction and survival of young.”

Pronghorns in Colorado’s North Park. Photo by Jack Dempsey.

The National Wildlife Federation and its Colorado affiliate have just the thing. How about some secure sagebrush habitat or access to clean air and water? NWF and the Colorado Wildlife Federation are teaming up to raise money for the wildlife that makes our state and region a special place.

Donations made to NWF and CWF on December 4th, “Colorado Gives Day,” go even further because the more people give to an organization, the bigger the contribution from the Community First Foundation.

Colorado Gives Day is an initiative to increase philanthropy through online giving and is sponsored by Community First Foundation and FirstBank. It’s a chance to highlight the work we do in such iconic places as South Park and North Park in Colorado, both prized for their world-class fisheries, high-mountain valleys, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, bears and other animals.

Western Colorado’s Piceance Basin is home to some of the country’s largest mule deer and elk herds. The San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado is a key route for migrating sandhill cranes.

 ”What better way to celebrate Colorado Gives Day than to contribute to something that makes Colorado so special—our wildlife,” said Ann Morgan, executive director of NWF’s Rocky Mountains and Prairies Region.

TEAMING UP FOR WILDLIFE

Greater sage-grouse. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Donate on Tuesday, December 4th to keep pronghorns, sage grouse, Colorado cutthroat trout and numerous other wildlife home on the range…and in the mountains, rivers and streams.

As documented by the Checks and Balances Project, people have been trying for nearly a century to free the oil from rocks underneath western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah. The last big push ended in Black Sunday, May 2, 1982. That’s when falling oil prices and rising costs led Exxon to abruptly shut down the Colony Project, throwing more than 2,000 people out of work and devastating the area economy.

 “It was a regional depression for probably about 10 to 12 years. It took a long time for this area, and Rifle in particular, to recover from that,” said Keith Lambert, a Rifle city councilman and former mayor, on the oil-shale bust.

Lambert is one of the Coloradans featured in three new videos by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. The videos, Shale Country: That was Then…This is Now, explore the uncertainty surrounding oil shale. Companies are still pursuing economically viable technologies.

A private oil shale test site in northwestern Colorado. Photo by David Ellenberger.

Never mind that a new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense says the federal government offered nearly $7 billion in loan and price guarantees to oil shale companies in the 1980s—and still no commercial oil shale industry exists in the U.S. So far, we’ve seen zero results from the public leases granted to companies for research and development.

Rep. Ralph Hall (Texas) wants to add another $50 million or so to the money U.S. taxpayers have already spent on chasing oil shale. I think multinational corporations like Shell and Exxon, both with stakes in oil shale country, can finance their own research.

Oil shale vs. shale oil

Oil shale and shale oil are not the same things. Oil shale is really kerogen, fossilized material that didn’t get enough heat and pressure in nature to turn into oil. It has to be heated to extreme temperatures, extracted and processed into a usable fuel. By contrast, shale oil is real oil that’s trapped in rock formations. Technological advances have made it easier to extract.

Look Before Leaping

Northwestern Colorado is home to oil shale deposits and some of the country’s argest mule deer herds. Photo by Steve Torbit

The process and technology to mine oil shale aren’t the unsettled issues. We don’t know how much energy and water will be required. The Government Accountability Office estimates that industrial-scale production could require as much as 123 billion gallons of water – enough water for a city of more than 750,000 homes. That could jeopardize such crucial Western water sources as the Colorado River and threaten fish, wildlife and communities, according to a new SFRED report.

 We’re kind of the canary in the mine – sportsmen— because the bald eagle doesn’t know about oil shale. The brown trout don’t know about oil shale. The deer and elk in this area don’t know about oil shale. We better know about oil shale because we become their voice.” -Kent Ingram, Colorado Wildlife Federation.

Nineteen regional and national sportsmen’s and conservation groups have signed a letter asking Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to proceed carefully on oil shale and saying that successful research must precede any commercial leasing of federal lands.

Let Salazar and Mike Poole, BLM acting director, know that we don’t want to gamble our water, wildlife, fishing and hunting on an unproven technology.