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New research from Wyoming's Powder River Basin reveals how natural gas drilling operations disrupted sage-grouse habitat as the bird's population plunged over the last few decades.
Ecologist Chris Kirol studied how sage-grouse hens were able to raise chicks despite the rapid expansion of coalbed methane operations in the early 2000s. His research, just published in the journal Wildlife Biology, found that succesful hens avoided two infrastructure features in particular: overhead power lines and wasterwater reservoirs.
“What we call ‘functional habitat loss’—areas no longer used by these hens because of these large overhead lines—it’s about 27 percent of the area,” Kirol told WyoFile.
Kirol's study area contained nearly 4,000 miles of overhead power lines, and he found hens with chicks generally wouldn't go within a third of a mile of those lines.
Kirol worked as a consultant during the coalbed methane boom and says the natural gas industry is often not cleaning up after itself.
“They said, ‘All this development is happening, but at the end of the life of these wells, all the power lines are going to be removed, all the wells are going to be removed, all the reservoirs are going to be removed, and habitat is going to be reclaimed and restored,’” Kirol told Wyofile. “But twenty-some years down the road, a lot of times that is not happening.”
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The startup of Pinyon Plain Mine inside the new national monument and despite the decades of opposition from Tribes and the local community over concerns for irreplaceable cultural and environmental resources represents the work we have ahead of us to reform America's antiquated, colonialism-driven mining laws. If not for these outdated laws, Pinyon Plain Mine would most likely not be moving forward today.”
