The federal Bureau of Land Management auctioned more than 150,000 Colorado acres for oil and gas development Thursday – including prime habitat for the endangered black-footed ferret.
In the $6.8 million lease sale, one of the largest ever in Colorado, oil and gas companies bid on about 155,000 of 192,000 acres offered.
Protests have been filed by environmental and recreation groups on 86 percent of the offered parcels.
BLM spokeswoman Theresa Sauer said the agency will review all of the protested leases before proceeding and refund lease payments on any protests that are upheld.
The agency offered a majority of the land where it is trying to establish a colony of endangered black-footed ferrets.
“In the wild, this is the most endangered mammal in North America,” said Joshua Pollock, conservation director for the Center for Native Ecosystems.
“There’s no way that oil and gas drilling can’t have some effect on black-footed ferrets and the prairie dog colonies they live on,” Pollock said.
Thursday’s lease sale, Pollock said, coincided with the first Endangered Species Day – a time set by congressional declaration when schoolchildren studied what has been done to save animals from extinction.
Black-footed ferrets, among the first animals classified as endangered, were considered possibly extinct until a few were found in Wyoming.
The survivors were bred in captivity by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is now working with other agencies to reintroduce them to the wild.
In northwest Colorado, BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Division of Wildlife have released 189 ferrets into prairie dog colonies at the Wolf Creek Management Area since 2001. Last year, the agencies reported the first wild-born ferret at the site.
Nearly 30,000 of the 52,000 acres in the ferret reintroduction area were offered for sale, and about half sold, Sauer said.
If energy development is permitted, the leases will include provisions “to avoid adverse influence on habitat,” Sauer said.
She dismissed criticisms that BLM proceeded on a day honoring the survival of such rare animals.
“We had our lease sale on the books long before Congress declared it an endangered species day,” she said.
Environmental groups filed protest letters about ferrets, potential wilderness areas and leases on lands where BLM is still revising its land management plans.
Mountain bikers objected to the prospect of gas drilling near popular trails in the Grand Junction area.
In the Rocky Mountain region, energy companies already have leased about 15 million acres “that are not in production,” said Pete Morton, a Wilderness Society economist. “It just seems to be a land grab by industry .”
Lynn Rust, a deputy state director of BLM, said demand for leases is driven by oil and gas prices.
If energy companies nominate parcels “in areas that are open for leasing” in BLM resource management plans, “we have to go forward and process those,” he said.
Staff writer David Olinger can be reached at 303-820-1498 or dolinger@denverpost.com.
