Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Bush's Energy Policy Lives Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
By FELICITY BARRINGER
INEDALE, Wyo. — A herd of 100 pronghorn antelopes were trotting over a ridge here, then meandered to a halt and foraged meditatively a few hundred yards from a natural gas wellhead and its squat companion tanks, filled with the petroleum byproducts of the drilling.
The pronghorns were stragglers in the winter migration of antelopes across the Upper Green River Valley, a landscape that has been tied to this ancient pattern for millenniums and is now being remade by the nation's thirst for clean–burning, environmentally friendly natural gas. Energy companies eager to slake that thirst while prices are high are accelerating the makeover of the longest wildlife migration route in the continental United States.
Whether this harms the wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem or affects the air or water in the Wind River Mountains is unclear. But it is clear that here in the Upper Green, as the area is called, the Bush administration's energy policies have come to life. The antelopes' migration route and the winter range of thousands of mule deer lie atop an estimated 7 trillion to 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — more than 4 percent of the nation's reserves, according to Don J. Likwartz, Wyoming's oil and gas supervisor.
As twilight settles in above the gas fields and darkening bands of red climb up the granite flanks of the nearby Wind River Mountains, some 20 drilling rigs light up.
Posted by P6 at December 14, 2003 08:05 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2518Given the effects of the trans-Alaskan pipeline on the carribou, this could be the best thing to happen to the antelopes.