Star-Tribune: ‘We hope the [effort] is successful’
Excerpts:
“The group still has to raise about half of the total purchase price by Dec. 31 for the deal to be completed. The trust has already raised $4.5 million in pledges and promises. Deborah Love, the Northern Rockies director of the Trust for Public Lands, told supporters in Jackson last Friday that she is confident the rest of the funds can be raised from private donors by the end of the year. . . .
. . . We hope the trust is successful in its fundraising campaign, for the sake of this special place in Wyoming and its use by future generations. While it was fair to current leaseholders that they be “grandfathered” in under the 2009 law, the sale will be the best possible result that could be obtained.”
Click here to read the entire Casper Star-Tribune editorial.
Details: $150 saves an acre
The Upper Hoback Basin, which for years has been threatened by the specter of industrial-scale oil and gas development, is on its way to permanent protection—but we still have to close the deal.
Plains Exploration and Production Company, the leaseholder and drilling proponent, has agreed to sell its oil and gas leases—covering 58,000 acres of national forest, private, and BLM land—to a conservation buyer, the Trust for Public Land.
The agreement was announced on Friday at a media event in Jackson, Wyoming, with Governor Matt Mead and about 100 local residents, including hunters, anglers, ranchers, and mineral industry workers.
“This is an outstanding outcome for the people of Wyoming—a true ‘win-win’ resolution. It respects both the wishes of local residents and the legal rights of leaseholders,” Governor Mead said during his address.
Thanks to the Wyoming Range Legacy Act, these leases underlying the Bridger-Teton National Forest can never be leased again, and we are working to ensure the few thousand acres outside the Legacy Act boundary are also protected.
About half of the $8.75 million purchase price has been raised so far. You can help save the Hoback by donating today at: tpl.org/savethehoback.
$150 saves an acre!
Other posts you might want to see:
Major Announcement: Agreement Struck, Citizens to Buy-Out Hoback Leases
Great video about the Upper Hoback: Too Special to Drill
Houston, we have a problem.
Opposition to Wyo Range drilling has ‘galvanized’
Hydraulic fracturing: what we’d like to achieve
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