Gas industry
gambles on New Mexico mesa - Federal
plan
seeks balance in rare desert grasslands
(Note: The reader is asked to read with discretion; a property
rights group
seeking to control the property rights of another seems
contradictory at best...)
September 10, 2001
By Laurel Jones
"Western Roundup"
It might not exactly be a love-in, but it’s good for the land.
In New Mexico, the pro-property rights Paragon
Foundation -- which has frequently defended
ranchers against environmentalists’ lawsuits -- is
teaming up with wilderness advocates to save Otero Mesa
(HCN,
9/10/01: Gas industry gambles on New Mexico mesa). With oil and
gas companies salivating for a crack at the mesa’s hidden treasures,
the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance is
pushing to protect over a half-million acres on the mesa as
wilderness.
Otero County, New Mexico - Looking out across the rolling
hills of blue and black grama grasses that surround his southeastern
New Mexico ranch, Charlie Lee can spot a car coming from miles away by
the cloud of dust it kicks up.
Smack-dab between Carlsbad and Las Cruces, and surrounded by a sea
of Bureau of Land Management grazing lands, Lee’s Hat Ranch is 70
miles from the nearest city and so off the beaten path that even the
U.S. mail doesn't make the trek.
"I wouldn't trade it for anything," says Charlie Lee of
his remote ranch life. A New Mexico senator in the 1980s, Lee has had
plenty of opportunities to leave his home on Otero Mesa, but he has
chosen, time and again, to stay. "I like the weather and I like
the solitude."
Now, it looks as if Lee’s quiet existence could become a thing of
the past.
In 1997, the Roswell-based Harvey E. Yates Company (HEYCO)
discovered an estimated 1 trillion cubic-feet of natural gas under the
surface of Otero Mesa, enough to supply one-twentieth of what the U.S.
consumes in a year.
With over 100 new lease applications from gas companies
waiting for review, the local BLM office is hustling to develop new
management regulations that will balance natural resource extraction
with sound habitat protection.
But favorable market conditions and a friendly administration in
Washington make protecting this seemingly unremarkable stretch of
grassland in the Chihuahuan desert a challenge.
In a draft plan released in October, the BLM selected a preferred
alternative that leaves 68 percent of the mesa open to leasing, pleasing
neither gas companies nor environmentalists.
While Otero Mesa may not have the visual grandeur of Montana’s
Rocky Mountain Front or Wyoming’s Red Desert, environmentalists are
nonetheless promising a fight.
They see Otero Mesa as an early test of the Bush administration’s
resolve to open undeveloped and biologically important public lands to
oil and gas development.
"It’s not Yosemite Valley, and we're not going to get the
nation going berserk to save it ... but it’s one of the healthiest
environments in the state," says Stephen Capra, media coordinator
for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=10711
Additional related information:
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"Otero Mesa"
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