From The Fort Collins Coloradoan: "CSU will get nearly $1 million from Shell Oil to study revegetation of oil shale developments in Colorado. The $950,000 research grant to Colorado State University's Warner College of Natural Resources will allow researchers to look at the 1970s restoration of shale-harvested land in the Piceance Basin. Lack of funding prevented researchers from studying the results of that three-decade-old revegetation."
Meanwhile, from The Deseret News: "Four environmental groups this week accused the Bureau of Land Management of skipping a step on its way to amending land-management plans that they say will 'expedite' commercial development of oil shale in the Green River Basin.
"The Wilderness Society, Western Resource Advocates, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter Monday to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. In the letter, they claimed the BLM bypassed a public protest period when the federal agency decided to amend 12 land management plans impacting 2.5 million acres of public lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
"The BLM also denied the governors of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah the opportunity to conduct formal consistency reviews with the policies and programs of their state, 'affecting air, water and wildlife,' The Wilderness Society said in a news release Tuesday."
Update More coverage from The Glenwood Springs Independent. From the article:
The Wilderness Society has asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to withdraw proposed plans that would open up about 360,000 acres in Colorado to possible oil shale development. The group made its request in a letter to Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, this week. The group's appeal largely stems from concerns that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hasn't allowed the public a chance to protest or allow governors to perform a consistency review of a final programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) about potential oil shale and tar sands development in the American West.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
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