TRCP-landowner collaboration enables energy extraction, sustains fish, wildlife, outdoor opportunities; respected conservation veteran Ed Arnett to lead TRCP energy team
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is putting into practice its precepts for responsible energy planning and development in a fish- and wildlife-rich region of the Rocky Mountain West. In partnership with The High Lonesome Ranch in west-central Colorado, the sportsmen’s group is pioneering an effort to formulate a landscape- and watershed-scale model of how to develop oil and gas resources without impairing the environment, jeopardizing fish and game or diminishing hunting and angling.
Comprising nearly 300 square miles of deeded and permitted lands, The High Lonesome Ranch is a mixed-use landholding that takes a conservation-minded approach to all its uses. It includes a guest and dude ranch, conference facilities, cattle operation, guided big game and upland bird hunting and angling, and expanding science research programs to be housed in the High Lonesome Institute.
“To the extent that the TRCP can help demonstrate responsible energy development on The High Lonesome Ranch,” said Steve Belinda, TRCP senior advisor on energy programs, “we are seeking collaboration and coordination with energy companies, adjacent landowners and the BLM, both to help conserve those lands and to provide a model for other land managers that demonstrates how to simultaneously pursue energy development and conserve fish and wildlife populations.”
The TRCP/High Lonesome Ranch development effort will be based on the TRCP’s FACTS for Fish and Wildlife, a set of principles that address key factors in determining whether and how energy projects should be pursued on lands containing valuable fish and wildlife resources. The FACTS principles were formulated by the TRCP Fish, Wildlife and Energy Working Group, a team of biologists and experts representing TRCP partner groups and sportsman-conservationists.
Belinda will shift from director of the TRCP Center for Responsible Energy Development to TRCP senior energy advisor, leading The High Lonesome Ranch efforts. Effective April 1, Ed Arnett will become director of the TRCP Center for Responsible Energy Development. Arnett joins the TRCP from Bat Conservation International, where he is director of science and policy. He has extensive experience as a wildlife biologist – with the federal government, nonprofit conservation and private industry – and is a member of the TRCP FWEWG.
In another staffing change, Neil Thagard is expanding his role from Western energy coordinator to TRCP Western outreach director, where he will build partnerships fostering responsible energy development throughout the West.
Learn more about the TRCP’s efforts to promote responsible energy development at http://www.trcp.org/issues/energy.
New partnership to implement TRCP’s responsible energy development model
