How Trump's oil-and-gas agenda threatens critical Wyoming wildlife habitat - High Country News

"These sagebrush-covered foothills of primarily Bureau of Land Management land have a higher concentration of sage grouse than anywhere else on the planet, likely in part because the birds have room to move. More than a thousand elk winter there, too, sustained by the high-elevation landscape's cured grasses, dried wildflowers and shrubs. So do pronghorn and mule deer, wintering or using the area as a stopover on their journeys, which include the longest documented mule deer and pronghorn migrations in the Lower 48."

"The Golden Triangle is 280,000 acres of superlatives, 'the best of the best,' said Tom Christiansen, a retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist who worked in the area for more than 30 years. Perennial and intermittent streams emerge from cracks and meander down wrinkles in the hills, creating wet meadows and irrigated pastures even at higher elevations. So far, the land has been relatively untouched by invasive species like cheatgrass."

"But the future of the region and its inhabitants hangs on by little more than a thread. It is one of only a handful of places in oil and gas-rich southwestern Wyoming not currently available for leasing, and the management plan protecting it is facing unprecedented attacks. Conservation groups fear it may be opened to fossil fuel development as the BLM rushes to rewrite the rules governing the area."

The Golden Triangle in western Wyoming spans 280,000 acres of sagebrush-covered foothills managed primarily by the Bureau of Land Management. This region supports the highest concentration of sage grouse on Earth, with mothers and chicks traveling up to 20 miles on foot to reach higher elevation wildflowers and insects. The area also sustains over a thousand wintering elk and hosts the longest documented mule deer and pronghorn migrations in the Lower 48 states. Perennial streams create wet meadows and irrigated pastures while remaining largely free from invasive species. However, the region's protected status faces significant threats from potential oil and gas leasing, BLM management plan revisions, and federal policies prioritizing energy development.

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