Coveting Condor Land

While President Bush’s energy plan is stalemated in the Senate, the administration is rushing oil and gas leasing programs in wild and scenic areas throughout the West, including a part of the Los Padres National Forest in Ventura County that provides sanctuary for the endangered California condor.

The U.S. Forest Service wants to throw open as many as 750,000 acres of the sprawling six-county forest to exploration and possible drilling, although the focus is on 140,000 acres that appear to have the highest potential for oil reserves. Most of that area had been protected by the Clinton administration from new road construction but now faces industrial invasion in the name of national energy security. Some of these tracts are adjacent to the Sespe Condor Sanctuary north of Fillmore.

In fact, there appears to be only a minuscule amount of oil in the Los Padres, a potential 84 million barrels, according to the forest’s draft environmental impact statement. That is less than 1% of the nation’s reserves, or nine days’ supply from the North Slope of Alaska via the trans-Alaska pipeline.

The forest’s proposal is particularly untimely. Los Padres officials are in the midst of drafting a forestwide land and resource management plan. Under a directive from Congress, this plan is designed to study all potential uses of forest lands, and threats to them, and provide a balance that best serves the land and the nation. The planning study would decide, for instance, where oil and gas development would be appropriate and where it would not. The plan won’t be completed until 2004. It makes no sense to go ahead with oil development now and possibly learn later it was a mistake.

Forest officials say the leasing proposal has to proceed because of legal rulings that oil and gas lease applications take precedent over any planning process. But this is a non sequitur. No applications are on file because no one can apply until the forest officials completes the leasing study.

There’s another thing wrong with this picture. The Bush administration has been rolling back a host of Clinton administration environmental initiatives on the excuse that affected local governments and businesses were not adequately consulted before action was taken. Now, elected officials, tourism leaders and environmental groups in the Los Padres region say that their views on the oil and gas leasing are not being adequately considered. They strongly oppose the expansion of oil production in the forest, certainly before the comprehensive forest plan is completed. This is coming from local and business interests, whose views are usually backed by the administration. In this instance, the Bush administration can do what’s expedient for its political allies and do the right thing at the same time.