Wildlife habitats need protection

It was well past dark when we finally found the campsite we had been looking for. The directions Chris' plumber had given him were easy to follow until we turned off the main road and began looking for the location he recommended. In the darkness, trees blended together and every clearing began to look the same. I suppose that's why the outdoor gurus always tell you to make camp before dark.

Chris is my younger brother by a couple of years, but despite the fact that he still has more hair than any one man should have a right to, I'm still better looking. (Guess that doesn't say much for him.) Joining us for a cow elk hunt in Colorado's Piceance Creek Basin was our dad, who was about 70 years old at the time.

The week before our arrival, Chris' plumber and his hunting partners were successful in filling their elk tags while hunting from this camp. We hoped to do the same.

Located north of the town of Rifle, the Piceance Creek Basin is a critical wintering area for mule deer and Rocky Mountain elk. In biological circles, they call this habitat. As such, the basin plays an important role in the survival of both species. It also has a reputation as a big-game hunter's paradise.

After a restless night, we were up and moving well before sunup. Each of us took our positions overlooking a series of trails worn deep by generations of elk that had passed back and forth from the trees behind us to the agricultural fields below. But as the sun chased away the darkness, the elk we were expecting never appeared. It didn't take us long to figure out why.

In the week between the plumber's hunt and ours, construction began on a new natural gas well just down the slope from where the elk should have crossed the ridge. We didn't see it the night before because of our late arrival. In the daylight hours, however, it was plainly seen, and the sound of machinery filled the air. As we walked back toward camp, a tractor trailer pulling a bulldozer on a lowboy rumbled past us on the narrow road. It was followed by a rig pulling a load of pipe.

Over the next few days, we passed hundreds of wells. Some were under construction and others were finished. Hundreds of miles of roads had been punched though the Piceance Basin, but there was no need for an elk or deer commuter lane on those roads because there were few animals to be found.

Dad ended up filling his tag on the final day of our hunt, but somehow I felt cheated. Not because my $250 nonresident elk tag lay unused in the bottom of my pocket, but because I had come to the Colorado high country to enjoy the wide-open spaces and instead found the thing I had come to escape -- fouled air, construction traffic and seemingly endless development.

As the country's energy needs continue to grow, so too has the energy industry's interests in the West's wild places. Unfortunately, the places where energy companies search or drill for gas and oil are often those places most critical for wildlife, especially for deer and elk. The Piceance Creek Basin is one.

Another is the winter range near Pinedale, Wyo. In six years, with less than 2 percent surface disturbance, use of that range by mule deer has dropped by 46 percent, according to an article written by Steve Belinda of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

If you want to gauge the impact of drilling on the Piceance Creek Basin, take a trip on Google Earth and check out the Roan Plateau.

Drilling for oil and gas also has moved into the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. You can bet that Nevada isn't far behind.

On Aug. 5, the Bureau of Land Management sold geothermal leases on 105,000 acres in northern Nevada for $28.2 million. In September, gas and oil leases on 266 parcels totaling nearly 497,000 acres will be up for sale.

The pursuit of gas, oil and geothermal energy undoubtedly will have an impact on the habitat where we pursue the animals we hunt and, ultimately, on wildlife populations. Some energy experts tout solar and wind energy, but while they may be clean they are not necessarily green.

This puts all outdoors types between the proverbial rock and a hard place. While we need the energy, we also must find a way to protect Nevada's wildlife habitat as our energy resources are being developed.

Perhaps there is no better time than now to join a conservation organization such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Mule Deer Foundation, Ducks Unlimited or Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn.

Doug Nielsen is an award-winning freelance writer and a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column is published Thursday. He can be reached at doug@takinitoutside.com.