Black-footed ferrets saved from drilling threat

Posted by egable on July 16th, 2008 filed in Endangered species, Energy development

Based on a  decision made public late last week, Colorado’s endangered black-footed ferrets will be protected from oil and gas drilling.  The Bureau of Land Management’s internal review board, the Interior Board of Land Appeals, overturned BLM’s May 2006 sale of oil and gas drilling leases in an area where endangered black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced in Colorado.

The Fish and Wildlife Service had urged that ferret habitat be excluded from the lease sale, but BLM sold drilling leases anyway. The ferrets, considered North America’s most endangered species, were reintroduced to Colorado in 2001 and an active program to recover populations to self-sustaining levels is underway.

The IBLA found that BLM broke the law by selling the leases “without any record [or] evidence that it ever responded to or even considered FWS’s views.” The board found the action illegal because “an expert sister agency urged that leasing be deferred” in the ferret habitat, but BLM did not “explain its rejection of FWS’ views.  BLM again failed to consider new information.”  The decision cited the service’s warning that “Introduction of an additional disturbance factor at this critical stage in the establishment of ferrets in this area could prove to be detrimental.”

Once found in prairie dog colonies from Canada to Mexico, the ferret was thought to be extinct until a small population was discovered in Wyoming in 1981.  By 1987 only 18 ferrets were left in the wild, and they were all captured and brought into captivity.  Ferrets have since been reintroduced to less than a dozen sites, including the Wolf Creek population in northwestern Colorado near Rangely.  Since 2001, 237 black-footed ferrets have been released in the Wolf Creek area, and wild-born ferret kits were first found there in 2005.  But the ferret’s status in Colorado is precarious — only 16 ferrets were confirmed to be present in the reintroduction area at the end of 2007.

This ruling overturns BLM’s decison to include 63,000 acres of black-footed ferret habitat, including most of the Wolf Creek reintroduction area and potential ferret reintroduction habitat in the Little Snake area near Craig, in a lease sale of nearly 200,000 acres for primarily natural gas drilling.

The Center for Native Ecosystems, WildEarth Guardians and the Wilderness Society appealed the BLM sale to the IBLA. They were represented by an attorney from Western Resource Advocates.

Center for Native Ecosystems and Western Resource Advocates secured a similar victory protecting black-footed ferrets in another ferret reintroduction area on BLM lands near Vernal, Utah from oil and gas drilling in 2006.