GREEN RIVER - Sweetwater County commissioners have joined a growing chorus of groups seeking to keep the remote Adobe Town in southern Wyoming free from energy development.

The commission approved a resolution this week that calls for keeping the area of the Red Desert off-limits to future oil and gas leasing. Commissioners said the area should be managed primarily for public recreation and wildlife.

"Adobe Town is one of Sweetwater County's natural treasurers, a landscape that is of great importance to local residents," the resolution said. "(The area) is a geological masterpiece that should be left as a gift to future generations in its current spectacular and unspoiled state."

Sarah Egolf, development director for the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, lauded the commission resolution. "We're delighted that the local governments in the Red Desert (area) are taking an active role in calling for the protection of the special places in their backyards," she said.

The 200,000-acre Adobe Town is located south of Wamsutter in eastern Sweetwater County. The area is home to wild horses, spectacular scenery and unique formations, but conservationists fear proposed development in the region could bring up to 15,000 new oil and gas wells to the area.

The area has also been the focus of a controversial three-dimensional seismic mapping project that got the go-ahead in June after a federal judge ruled the energy survey could proceed. Conservationists have been pushing for several years for the withdrawal of Adobe Town from oil and gas leasing to protect the area.

Sweetwater County Commission Chairman John Pallesen said in a Biodiversity news release that energy development is affecting the county in a lot of ways.

"You can't go too many places in our county right now without seeing some sort of road, or a pipeline, or a compressor station," Pallesen said. "Listen, we can extract and extract and extract, but when you get into places like this, you are destroying something that you will never be able to reclaim."

Last week, the 18,000-member Wyoming State AFL-CIO sent a formal protest to the Bureau of Land Management asking the agency to withdraw all of Adobe Town from oil and gas leasing and other mineral entry. Union officials said Adobe Town is an area of such overwhelming importance to the public and to state union members that it should not be sacrificed to produce the resource.

Energy industry officials, however, have said that drilling in the area can be done in an environmentally sensitive manner and without significant harm to wildlife and other resources.