Why Hunters Should Engage on Issues Surrounding Energy Development
- Russell Kuhlman, Executive Director of the Nevada Wildlife Federation
- Apr 28, 2023
At first glance, there are not a lot of reasons why the hunting community should be knowledgeable about oil and gas development, yet both activities occur on public lands and use similar language. Terms like leasing, exploration, fees, high and low potential areas are some of the vocabulary present in both endeavors.
Describing the first steps in oil and gas development is comparable to scouting for an upcoming hunt. Both start with using the best available research and science to identify areas with the highest potential for success and a hope that you are the only one that knows about it. However, after the first step, the similarities end.
If you are a hunter, you have stumbled upon a few absolute truths. First, the more time you spend scouting and planning, the greater the chance of success. Second, even a blind squirrel finds a nut or two. I have experienced hunts that resulted in no legal animals seen in 14 days, and I have been tagged out 5 minutes into the opening morning. It is that sense of the unknown that makes for the adventure.
In the energy development world, the world's top geologists study the landscape to determine areas with high potential for fossil fuels. Common sense would dictate that oil and gas companies would only buy leases with high potential for resource deposits. However, between 2012 and 2020, 20.8 million acres of approved onshore federal leases were never used to produce oil or gas. Of those 20 million acres, five million acres of public lands were leased in areas with low/no potential for oil and gas and overlapped with valuable fish and wildlife habitat.
In the hunting world, spending time and money in areas with low or no game makes little sense and rarely results in a successful hunt. In the extractive resource world, in Nevada alone, between 2011 and 2020, over 5 million leased federal acres in NV were terminated, relinquished, or expired without ever having produced oil or gas. Apparently, there is a reason to invest in these types of areas although I am currently unsure why.
At the surface, it doesn't seem harmful for the oil and gas industry to lease public land when those lands never see any development. However, a number of leases that occur on public lands in the West happen in sagebrush country on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). From the latest study, the USGS found that the West is losing 1.3 million acres of sagebrush habitat each year. If you are a hunter in the West, you may have noticed this loss of habitat which is also a contributing factor to our declining mule deer and sage grouse. When we are losing vital big game habitat and wildlife populations on public lands, it is critical our land managing agencies should be protecting and conserving our resources, not wasting time performing environmental assessment surveys for oil and gas development on lands that have neither.
Fortunately, the BLM has begun taking action aimed at stopping habitat loss and Congress has addressed the leasing of low/no potential lands. Most recently, the BLM announced plans to elevate conservation on equal footing as other uses on public lands. It’s a proposal that is great news for Nevada wildlife and sporting communities. Earlier this year, the BLM stated that wildlife migration corridors and outdoor recreational activities – which include hunting – will be prioritized when making land management decisions. In Congress, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) prohibited the act of noncompetitive leasing which occurs almost exclusively on low/no potential lands for oil and gas development. Non-competitive leasing allowed any bidder to tie up public land for fossil fuel development for as little as $1.50 an acre. Although these actions are a step in the right direction to reverse habitat loss and recover our wildlife species, threats still remain like H.R. 1 which is currently sitting in Congress. This legislation would cancel the provisions made on prohibiting non-competitive leasing in the IRA and would reinstate various oil and gas leasing rules that were set over 100 years ago and were updated through passing the IRA.
That’s why it’s critical that the White House and Department of Interior begin the rulemaking process to reform oil and gas leasing. They need to adopt the reforms outlined in the IRA to make them durable. The White House also needs to reform the bonding process so that oil and gas companies are forced to pay to clean up public lands after they’ve developed them. Right now, taxpayers are stuck with that bill. It’s time to prioritize the health of the land – not the bottom line of energy developers.
As hunters, we are able to see first hand what is happening on our landscapes and to our wildlife populations. With that privilege comes the responsibility to share our knowledge, especially when that knowledge is seeing the decline of habitat and wildlife. As our public lands continue to see an increase of visitors and development, hunters have an opportunity and tradition to be the voice of conservation and how responsible energy development can be done on public lands.
Russell Kuhlman is the Executive Director of the Nevada Wildlife Federation.
