WEST-WIDE ENERGY CORRIDOR
Several federal agencies have created the West-wide Energy Corridor, in fact a network of 6,000 miles of energy corridors — areas planned to support the infrastructure needed to move energy resources like coal, oil shale and tar sands, oil, natural gas, and hydrogen. This sprawling corridor network is sited on public lands and will lead to a multitude of direct and indirect impacts on threatened and endangered species, including habitat fragmentation at the landscape scale. On January 16, 2009, on behalf of the Center and the Oregon Natural Desert Association, the Center notified the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service that we intend to challenge the energy corridors for the agencies’ failure to consider its effects on threatened and endangered species as required by the Endangered Species Act, and for the corridors’ close alignment with every proposed and existing coal-fired power plant in the western United States — rather than the West’s vast renewable energy resources.
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