Sportsmen Praise Salazar for Setting the Record Straight and Calling for Balance in Public Lands Management

DENVER – A sportsmen coalition today commended Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for reminding oil and gas industry officials that America’s public lands are not an entitlement for them to do with as they want.

“Despite what the energy industry may think, public lands aren’t their sole domain,” said Kate Zimmerman, senior policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation, a leader of the Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development coalition.  “Public lands belong to all of us.”

The sportsmen coalition made its comments after a news conference today at which Secretary Salazar announced the federal government’s onshore oil and gas lease sales for 2010.  During his remarks, the secretary brushed aside recent criticism from energy trade groups that claimed the government was not moving fast enough to open public lands to oil and gas development.

The reality is that oil and gas companies have access to more land than they can use. 

“The energy industry already has leases on millions of acres of public land, but they haven’t developed 70 percent of it,” Zimmerman said.
 
The sportsmen also urged Secretary Salazar to persevere in his efforts to restore balance to a leasing program that is in dire need of repair.

"Sportsmen appreciate the Department of the Interior's interest in reforming the federal minerals leasing process and in ensuring responsible oil and gas development on our public lands,” said Steve Belinda, energy policy manager for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, one of the leaders of the sportsmen coalition. “We hope that in so doing the department takes into account its mandate to manage for other, multiple-use values, including hunting, fishing and the range of outdoor activities citizens have historically enjoyed on these lands."

Trout Unlimited, another leader of the Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development coalition, echoed the need for balance in the way public lands are managed.

"After seeing what single-use management has done to places like the Upper Green River Basin in Wyoming, all sportsmen can appreciate fish and wildlife getting a fair shake when it comes to energy development,” said Brad Powell, energy policy director for Trout Unlimited. “A return to multiple-use management isn't unjust regulation, it’s sound stewardship."