RIFLE, Colo. - Outdoors guide Keith Goddard remembers when he could go for hours or even days and not see another person on top of western Colorado's Roan Plateau.
"Up until a few years ago, you could stand right here all day long, and if you'd seen one or two vehicles, you'd seen a bunch," Goddard said, peering from a field of wildflowers to rocky, wooded slopes below.
Fearing that energy development sweeping through the Rockies could permanently scar the landscape, hunters and anglers are forming alliances with environmental groups like The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club.
The two sides, who have sparred in the past, are trying to protect such areas as northern Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills and New Mexico's Valle Vidal.
Standing on the Roan, where there are already some 30 natural gas wells on private land, Goddard said he doesn't want his favorite hunting ground developed, but sees it as inevitable. He said he just hopes the impact is minimized and drilling is banned in the most wild and environmentally sensitive areas.
"If they do it heavy-scale and take a shotgun approach on the Roan and it's real tight density and spacing, it will put us out of business and it will disperse the deer and elk herds," Goddard said.
The Roan Plateau, which straddles two Colorado counties, generates an estimated $5 million a year for the local economy from hunting, fishing and wildlife watching, according to the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
It could also provide enough natural gas for 4 million homes for the next 20 years, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association trade group.
Trout Unlimited, historically focused on the nation's trout and salmon fisheries, recently toured the plateau before the Bureau of Land Management releases its final environmental impact statement - in essence, the management options - for drilling public land in the area. That report is expected next month.
"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.
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 right now."
"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, valued by hunters and environmentalists alike. Two years ago, he advised groups opposed to drilling there to raise private money to buy the federal leases.
In June, Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico co-sponsored a bill prohibiting energy development in the Valle Vidal after her Democratic challenger signed a pledge opposing drilling. Environmentalists and sportsmen have long urged protection for the 101,794-acre valley in northern New Mexico.
Sen. Ken Salazar and Rep. John Salazar, both Colorado Democrats, have said the top of the Roan Plateau shouldn't be drilled. 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. Supporters said the sale would raise money for rural schools.
"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 while reducing developers' costs. Among other things, they propose drilling more wells from a single pad, limiting roads and pipelines, and developing in blocks so the landscape isn't fragmented.
Bob Elderkin, a retired BLM employee and hunter who helped draft the proposals, said circulating the guidelines in an election season was intentional.
"When our elected officials start realizing there's a large united bloc of the voting public that's serious about this, then they'll become serious about what we're proposing," Elderkin said.
Wonstolen, the senior vice president and general counsel for the oil and gas association, said the energy industry recognizes there are special places on the plateau that should be protected.
"We also believe that we can make the Roan Plateau a showcase of development," Wonstolen said. "It is a unique resource, perhaps the biggest North American gas play ready to go."
Elderkin, who worked on the Roan Plateau while with the BLM, said he wants strong rules in place to make sure development leads to good examples across the West.
"This current gas play is different from anything we've experienced in the past because in the past we were always talking about a specific oil field or specific gas field of limited geographical extent," he said, standing beside the East Fork of Parachute Creek as it flowed toward a 200-foot waterfall. "This gas play is literally from horizon to horizon."
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