Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America

David E. Naugle

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781597266581, 9781597266574
• eBook ISBN: 9781610910224
• Subtopic: Zoology

Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America offers a road map for securing our energy future while safeguarding our heritage.

Contributors show how science can help craft solutions to conflicts between wildlife and energy development by delineating core areas, identifying landscapes that support viable populations, and forecasting future development scenarios to aid in conservation design. The book

• frames the issue and introduces readers to major types of extraction
• quantifies the pace and extent of current and future energy development
• provides an ecological foundation for understanding cumulative impacts on wildlife species
• synthesizes information on the biological response of wildlife to development
• discusses energy infrastructure as a conduit for the spread of invasive species
• compares impacts of alternative energy to those of conventional development

The final section calls for a shift away from site-level management that has failed to mitigate cumulative impacts on wildlife populations toward broad-scale planning and implementation of conservation in priority landscapes. The book concludes by identifying ways that decision makers can remove roadblocks to conservation, and provides a blueprint for implementing conservation plans. Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America is a must-have volume for elected officials, industry representatives, natural resource managers, conservation groups, and the public seeking to promote energy independence while at the same time protecting wildlife.

PART I

Energy Development and the Human Footprint

Forecasts point to the Rocky Mountain West as a primary place where the United States and Canada must look to increase energy production. The essence of the conflict between energy development and wildlife conservation in the West is the large amount of spatial overlap between competing resource values. Many of the landscapes being developed, and others that have been leased for exploration and potential development, overlie our largest and best remaining wildlife habitats. Viable solutions to this conflict must include large open spaces for wildlife because modern-day energy developments are industrial zones with disturbance levels that are incompatible with wildlife conservation. Wind and solar developments address climate change problems by reducing carbon emissions and reduce air and water pollution by providing clean and renewable energy. But simply switching a portion of our energy portfolio to renewable sources will not solve wildlife problems because wind and solar production requires an amount of space per unit of power second only to that needed for biofuel production. Rather, placing wind and solar developments in areas that have already been heavily disturbed by people will help us realize all the benefits of renewable sources of energy.

The first step toward sustainable development is an unbiased inventory and analysis of our onshore energy resources and a working knowledge of the human footprint that accompanies development. Part I characterizes the increasing demand for energy and quantifies the extent to which major biomes will be affected by development.

Chapters 1 and 2 provide the big energy picture that is the background and foundation for the rest of the book. New and existing energy development may directly or indirectly affect 96 million hectares (291 million acres) of the five major biomes in western North America. Boreal forest, shrublands, and grasslands are especially vulnerable because of their geographic concurrence with the sedimentary basins that hold hydrocarbon deposits. These same systems will be further affected if renewable energy development proceeds on a maximum-development basis. Predicted impacts resulting from renewable energy extraction are especially disconcerting because the affected systems support high biodiversity yet have received little protection.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Energy Development in the West

DAVID E. NAUGLE AND HOLLY E. COPELAND

The story of North American “progress” is best characterized by the wave of human influence that originated in the East and spread westward. We first cleared eastern forests for European settlement and subsequently plowed midcontinent grasslands to produce food and fiber. Now the heavy footprint of energy development threatens to destroy the last of our large and intact western landscapes. People in the West are beginning to realize the social and economic tradeoffs associated with burgeoning development. Canadians enjoy the economic gains from exporting energy to U.S. markets but worry that declines in air and water quality accompanying extraction may be too high. Americans happily consume Canadian imports because buying oil from countries unfriendly to the United States poses a threat to national security. Energy development is a key to domestic prosperity in both countries, but poorly planned and largely unregulated, it comes at a high cost to nature.

We define the West as the eleven U.S. states located west of and including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Extracting oil, gas, coal, and uranium in the West is not new, but the pace and extent of development are. Also new is the realization that the West harbors some of the best renewable energy resources—plenty of wind, sun, and geothermal power—at a time when clean, green energy is part of a critical long-term solution to the problems of energy security, carbon emissions, and pollution. The famous NASA nighttime Earth satellite image tells the story best. While we have settled the coasts and heartlands of North America, the interior West has remained largely dark. With the addition of new wind turbines, wells, and mines, we risk losing our last dark spaces on the map.

Since the late 1990s, as energy development intensified throughout the West, scientists began carefully studying this development and its effect on wildlife populations and ecosystems. In Canada, energy-related roads and seismic lines cut through the boreal forest have decreased populations of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) through increased predation by wolves (Canis lupus) (chap. 5). In Montana and Wyoming, sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) populations are declining because adult birds remain in traditional nesting areas regardless of increasing levels of development, only to experience high rates of mortality, and yearlings that have not yet imprinted leave the gas fields in an attempt to escape human disturbance (chap. 4). In Wyoming, studies have shown that energy development has severed historic pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) migration corridors linking breeding and winter ranges (chap. 5). In addition to wildlife impacts, scientists are concerned that energy development acts as a conduit for invasive plant species, altering and degrading otherwise intact and functioning landscapes (chap. 7). Together, these studies implicate the cumulative effect energy development has on wildlife populations, resulting in declines of many iconic western species and the habitats on which they depend. These species are biologically important to the ecosystems that they inhabit and also socially relevant to the people who live and recreate in the West, resulting in heightened public awareness of impacts and an intensified desire to find a balanced solution to development.

Using less energy is an obvious and partial solution to the problem. Conservation efforts in the United States could reduce overall global demand because the United States consumes 21 percent of all the energy the world produces. To date, the systemic changes needed for significant energy conservation have not yet occurred, and projections in future U.S. energy demands by leading experts reflect this failure. Energy demands in the United States are projected to grow 0.5–1.3 percent annually (Energy Information Administration [EIA] 2009a). Projections that incorporate conservation-related energy policy changes, best available technology, and increased prices still indicate overall annual U.S. energy demand growing from 107.5 exajoules (1 exajoule = 0.95 quadrillion British thermal units) in 2007 to 115.8 exajoules in 2030, an increase roughly equivalent to California’s current annual energy consumption. These projections show that conservation and energy efficiency measures could reduce overall residential demand by 1 percent per year and commercial demand by 0.1 percent per year. Unfortunately, energy savings from more efficient lighting and building upgrades are projected to be offset by increases in energy use elsewhere. For example, population growth coupled with in-migration to the Sunbelt increases air conditioning demands, and efficiencies gained from better household refrigerators and lights are offset by the increasing number of home electronics. Energy conservation alone will only slow demand, not decrease it.

The abundance of energy resources in the West ensures that the demand will be met there, at least in part. A recent U.S. inventory (Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2008) shows the largest amount of future U.S. oil and gas resources coming from the West. Solar, wind, and geothermal resources are also likely to be concentrated in geographically distinct areas of the West, with wind in the high plains and solar in the desert Southwest.

Western states and provinces are already heavy energy producers. In 2007, the United States produced 76.5 exajoules domestically and imported the remaining 36.5 exajoules to meet demand (the balance, 5.5 exajoules, was exported). Canada produced 20 exajoules in 2006; nearly all the oil Canada produced but did not consume was exported to the United States (EIA 2008). Coal dominated U.S. production with 25 exajoules, 34 percent of which occurred in Wyoming and Montana, and nearly all Canadian coal was produced from large mines located in the western provinces (Stone 2007). Natural gas was the second largest source of energy produced in the United States (22 exajoules), 28 percent of which came from western states. Oil was the third largest source of U.S. energy production (11 exajoules), with 20 percent produced in western states (EIA 2009a). Nuclear energy produced 9 exajoules in the United States, with almost all active uranium mines in western states; Canadian uranium mining also occurs predominantly in western provinces. Renewable energy, including hydropower, made up the remaining U.S. energy production at 8 exajoules (EIA 2008). EIA (2009a) scenarios show renewable energy consumption growing at 3.3 percent per year for solar, biofuels, and wind, but fossil fuels remain the dominant energy source overall.

Americans’ love affair with the West has created clusters of “40-acre ranchettes” around many western cities, carving up intact landscapes into low-density housing fragments. This exurban sprawl has become a primary environmental concern in the West. Increasingly apparent is a new threat of energy sprawl—the land area used for roads, wind turbines, wells, and transmission lines—that compounds the threat of exurban sprawl. With energy sprawl factored in, more than 206,000 square kilometers of land could be affected by new energy production by 2030 (McDonald et al. 2009). The increase in energy sprawl presents a “green dilemma” (chap. 8). All current sources of energy except nuclear have a large terrestrial footprint or carbon footprint. Siting new renewable energy sources in already disturbed habitats would decrease their footprint; along with decreases in air and water pollution, such measures make renewable energy more desirable for wildlife and for conservation as a whole.

Given the abundance of resources in the West and the species at immediate risk, this book covers energy resources (hydrocarbons, solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, and nuclear) in the western United States and Canada likely to affect terrestrial systems. Hydropower is not covered because the impacts are largely aquatic and have already occurred. Offshore and onshore energy development in the East, Alaska, and the Yukon Territory is beyond the scope of this book.

To overcome the challenges of energy development in a place as socially valued and biologically rich as the West, we need a unifying vision for how to safeguard wildlife and allow development so that the right actions occur in the right places. To create that vision, the chapters that follow bring together the ideas of a diverse group of biologists, ecologists, and rangeland specialists representing a small nucleus of western federal and state agencies, nongovernment organizations, and universities that have been working on these issues. They have each pioneered and championed approaches to quantifying impacts of wildlife from energy development. Collectively, their studies show the similarities and challenges that species face with energy development and present a unifying vision and shared conservation strategies.

This story begins in chapter 2 with the likely extent and severity of future impacts in dominant biomes of the West. Chapter 2 uses the spatial tools of geographic information systems and the myriad publicly available datasets to provide an unbiased and holistic view of current and probable future energy development and the biomes affected. Although previous studies have shown that grasslands and shrublands are some of the least protected biomes in the West, chapter 2 highlights the immediate risk of oil extraction in the boreal forests of Canada. Everyone has a stake in the future of the West. The world expects the historical West to retain its wildness and wildlife, even if only a fraction of those people ever come to see it. The mere knowledge of its existence is a comfort. We need the West’s oil, gas, wind, and other energy resources and yet also its essential character of wildness. Our choices will define this character well into the future.

Chapter 2

Geography of Energy Development in Western North America: Potential Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems

HOLLY E. COPELAND, AMY POCEWICZ, AND JOSEPH M. KIESECKER

Rapid development of the rich energy resources found in western North America may have dramatic consequences for its vast areas with low human population density and undeveloped wild lands. If development continues at its current pace, the outcome will probably be energy sprawl (McDonald et al. 2009), resulting in a western landscape fragmented by energy infrastructure such as roads, well pads, wind towers, and transmission lines. Scientists increasingly warn of the threat posed by energy sprawl to iconic western species such as sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and pronghorn (Antilocapra americana). Clearly, energy development is detrimental to many wildlife species, and the increasing demand for energy and the West’s abundant supply nearly ensure that these resources will be developed. Our aim here is to illustrate the scale of potential impacts, to draw comparisons between different energy sources, and to catalyze large-scale planning efforts designed to meet energy demands while reducing impacts on sensitive wildlife species and habitats.

The energy demands of the United States are high, but so is domestic production. In 2008, energy consumption in the United States exceeded 104.5 exajoules (1 exajoule = 0.95 quadrillion British thermal units), with 78.1 exajoules produced domestically, and imports supplying the remainder of demand (34.8 exajoules). Canada consumed 14.8 exajoules and produced 20.4 exajoules in 2006; nearly all the oil Canada produced but did not consume was exported to the United States (Energy Information Administration [EIA] 2008). Canada has large reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, along with promising potential for development of wind and geothermal energy. Increasing political uncertainty in many oil-producing nations has prompted accelerating exploitation of North American energy resources, and growing recognition of the potential social and biological ramifications of climate change ...

Table of contents

• About Island Press
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART I - Energy Development and the Human Footprint
• PART II - Biological Response of Wildlife and Invasive Plants to Energy Development
• PART III - Conservation by Design: Planning and Implementing Solutions
• LITERATURE CITED
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ABOUT THE EDITOR
• INDEX
• Island Press. |Board of Directors