BLM oil and gas lease sale 'criminal,' Redford says

Actor and director Robert Redford on Wednesday loaned his star power to a fight over oil and gas development in Utah that has prompted a lawsuit to stop a federal lease sale Friday in Salt Lake City.

"These lands are not Cheney and Bush's, they're ours," Redford said via satellite from Los Angeles during a media briefing at the National Press Club in Washington. "There's so much deception, so much sleight of hand here. ... So, I say: Stop it. Enough is enough."

The Bureau of Land Management is slated to hold a sale Friday that will auction off parcels on thousands of acres in Utah that industry has nominated as ripe for oil and gas development. Utah BLM spokeswoman Mary Wilson said Wednesday that there are no plans to postpone or cancel the sale on Friday.

In recent weeks, the National Park Service was caught off guard by the parcels designated for sale, leading to negotiations between the BLM and Park Service to at least temporarily pull some of the parcels. The deferred parcels are located next to Dinosaur National Monument, Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Desolation Canyon and Nine Mile Canyon, home to a vast collection of cultural resources.

But the parcels pulled so far have not satisfied critics of the sale.

"The Bush administration has rushed to get these leases out the door," said Sharon Buccino, attorney and director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's land program.

Buccino said her group and others, including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club, sued the Interior Department on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit challenges the sale of 80 parcels on about 110,000 acres of "red-rock country" in what she called the "last, best wild places" in the country.

Buccino pointed out that the parcels are being offered because of BLM's three "hastily" approved resource-management plans administered through BLM's Moab, Price and Vernal field offices. Parcels still set to be sold will affect Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument. The new lawsuit, she added, will challenge leases that may be unlawful and contends that companies buying those leases will do so at their own "peril."

Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., joined the news conference, adding his frustration over what many are calling a "fire sale" on Friday in Salt Lake City. Baird is originally from Fruita, Colo., located just over the Utah border. "There is no place on earth like what is at stake today," he said.