"For the last three years, we've been organizing hunters and anglers all over the West on energy-related issues because there's just been an unprecedented amount of gas and oil development going on all over the West in some of our last remaining wild places," said David Stalling, Trout Unlimited's Western field coordinator based in Missoula, Mont.

The efforts have been noticed. At a recent energy forum in Denver, Ken Wonstolen of the oil and gas association called the alliance of outdoors groups and environmentalists an effective marriage of convenience.

"It's something we have to address very seriously," Wonstolen said.

Politicians have noticed, too.

Bill Ritter, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, has sent letters to sportsmen, pledging to be a good steward of public lands. His Republican opponent, Rep. Bob Beauprez, has also met with hunting and fishing groups.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., locked in a tight re-election race, has introduced legislation to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal land along the Rocky Mountain Front.

In June, Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico co-sponsored a bill prohibiting energy development in the Valle Vidal in northern New Mexico after her Democratic challenger signed a pledge opposing drilling.

In Wyoming, Republican Sen. Craig Thomas joined Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal last year to successfully protest proposed oil and gas leases in the national forests.

This kind of bipartisan opposition in the West helped scuttle a plan by the Bush administration to sell 300,000 acres of national forest, said Daniel Kemmis, a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

"That was as stillborn a proposal as you could find, in large part because so many Western Republicans opposed it," Kemmis said. "They saw these broad-based coalitions that are now just too politically potent to ignore."

Alliances among environmentalists, loggers, ranchers and hunters have evolved as environmental groups realized they needed local support, Kemmis said. He said he believes more industries will follow timber companies in working with grass-roots activists.

"I think it would be very good for the West if we begin to see more of that kind of cooperation," Kemmis said.

More than 25 Colorado groups ranging from the Colorado Environmental Coalition to the Colorado Bowhunters Association have written guidelines they believe would minimize drilling's impacts on wildlife and habitat.

Bob Elderkin, a retired BLM employee and hunter who helped draft the proposals, said circulating the guidelines in an election season was intentional.