Interior Department officials say a proposed energy development on the Hoback Rim could hurt wildlife, air quality, and sensitive lakes in Grand Teton National Park and should be analyzed more thoroughly.

In a letter to Big Piney District Ranger Greg Clark dated June 22, Robert F. Stewart, regional environmental officer for the Department of the Interior, said that a Forest Service EIS on a plan by Plains Exploration and Production Co. to drill three exploratory wells near Hoback Ranches in the Bridger-Teton National Forest didn’t take into account a number of possible environmental impacts in the park.

Plains Exploration has since withdrawn the EIS in order expand the review, which could include full field development on 22,000 acres the company has leased in the area. The request also means environmentalists have more time to explore the consequences of drilling in an area that biologists consider important wildlife habitat.

In the letter, Stewart said his primary wildlife concern is for the Canada lynx.

“Radio collar data indicate that lynx from the Wyoming Range have made broad scale movements into areas adjacent to the park,” he said. “Consequently, we are concerned about activities that would reduce the amount of suitable habitat or affect functional travel/movement corridors.”

Further, Stewart said the development could harm the park’s air quality and, consequently, fragile mountain lakes such as Delta, Surprise, and Amphitheater could suffer from nitrogen and sulfur deposition.

“The National Park Service has major concerns regarding the degradation of visibility within Grand Teton National Park,” he said. “Clean air is a fundamental resource of the park and visitors place a high value upon unimpaired views of the spectacular Teton Range.”

Stewart goes on to say that similar projects significantly impede air quality for up to 16 days out of the year, and those projects are located farther away from the park.   

The Forest Service received about 19,000 comments on the project from across the country, almost all of which were opposed to drilling in the forest. The comment period for the current draft environmental impact statement ended April 30 and the proposal was withdrawn in mid-June.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, the Teton County Board of Commissioners, and the Wyoming Travel and Tourism Board have all spoken against the plan. Freudenthal said the wildcat wells could start a process that would ruin the Wyoming Range.

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said he is pleased that the Park Service is looking at the Plains Exploration project.

“This landscape, although not adjacent to the park, is connected through it’s wildlife,” he said. “We know that we can’t sustain a lynx population with just the national parks.

Camenzind said that other animals such as wolverines, deer, and wolves could also suffer.