Dark Side of the Boom
Nestled between mountain and forest, the Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming holds some of the world’s largest deposits of fossil fuel. It’s also home to tens of thousands of Sublette mule deer.In the summer, the deer forage on high-elevation protected forestland. When the cold sets in, they migrate—up to 150 miles—along a sagebrush path to low-elevation areas where shallow snow makes it easier to find food.“Unfortunately, it’s also those low-elevation basins where all the gas occurs,” says wildlife biologist Hall Sawyer, of Western EcoSystems Technology, who’s used GPS radio collars to track the deer in the region over the past five years. The data shows that the dramatic increase in natural gas drilling has disrupted the ungulates’ perennial journey. “We don’t know if the animals will be able to negotiate the changes, or just quit migrating,” he says. If the latter, then most would likely die of starvation.Read more at...Plenty, November 2007.