Energy development called a threat to U.S. natural, cultural resources

BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said the agency's finances are more complex than portrayed in the report. She said employees funded by one program often help with others, including cultural preservation.

Boddington also disputed that energy development is overwhelming the agency's other duties.

"We are required by law to manage for multiple uses of the land. In cases where we permit energy development, that's a tiny proportion of public lands," Boddington said.

Still, only 6 percent of BLM's 262 million acres have been surveyed for cultural resources, said Destry Jarvis, who wrote the National Trust's report. Jarvis was an assistant director of the National Park Service during the Clinton administration.

The 2006 federal budget gives the BLM $2.27 per acre to manage the National Landscape Conservation System while it provides $19 per acre to manage national parks, Moe said. The proposed budget recommends cutting the BLM conservation system's 178 rangers by seven or eight, he said.

Further sapping the BLM is a mandate under federal energy policy to speed up approval of energy development on public lands, according to the National Trust's report. Funds that should be used for more surveys are being siphoned off to assess and protect sites where companies and ranchers want to mine, graze livestock or drill oil and gas, Jarvis said in an interview Monday.

Companies should be required to pay their share, and the government should request adequate funding to handle the increasing number of leases on BLM land, said Jarvis, an independent consultant.

Besides diverting staff and funding, Moe said, energy development threatens ancient dwellings and sites with its heavy traffic, new roads and "thumper trucks," which pound the ground and send shockwaves to pinpoint oil and gas deposits.

About 85 percent of the Canyons of the Ancients is under lease for energy development. Up to 2,000 natural gas wells are proposed in the 75-mile-long Nine Mile Canyon.

Moe acknowledged that the BLM is charged with managing its land for multiple uses.

"Obviously, we need oil and gas and need to drill on public lands, but it's a question of where we do it and at what cost," Moe said.

Despite the country's "difficult fiscal and political environment," he recommend that Congress increase the BLM's $15 million yearly budget for cultural resources to $50 million in five years.

His other recommendations are to comprehensively survey BLM lands that haven't been checked for cultural and historic resources; pass legislation codifying the National Landscape Conservation System, which was created by administrative order; and work with Congress to start a foundation to raise private funds, similar to ones that work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

---

Contributing: Joe Bauman, Deseret Morning News