RAWLINS - Wyoming's Powder Rim in the Southern Red Desert is designated as an endangered linkage in a conservation program that if completed would eventually provide a continuous wildlife corridor between Mexico and Canada, the Wildlands Project announced Tuesday in a flyover of the area.

Noted for its isolation, its use as habitat for desert elk, pronghorn, and sage grouse, and its relatively undeveloped status, the Powder Rim is identified as an endangered area because of its key wildlife populations and potential impacts from the proposed Desolation Flats coalbed methane project by Anadarko.

The Wildlands Project is a science-based ecosystem framework developed over the past 10 years, according to Wildlands Field Director Jen Clanahan of the Heart of the West division in Boulder. The blueprint calls for large landscape planning in North America by identifying a 4,000-mile connected network of lands that make up the "Spine of the Continent mega-linkage," she said. The project generally follows the Continental Divide from Mexico to Canada, crossing New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

The Powder Rim area links the Medicine Bow National Forest with public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, she said.

"Our challenge now is to move from theory to implementation," Clanahan said. In Wyoming, Heart of the West is represented by Biodiversity Conservation Alliance headquartered in Laramie.

"With the western basins under assault from accelerated oil and gas drilling, it is critically important that we engage in long-range planning with a vision for the future," said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

On Tuesday, the Wildland Project provided an overflight of the Powder Rim area in cooperation with Lighthawk, an organization of pilots who volunteer their time and use of their planes to take conservation group members, reporters, politicians and others on flights over areas of concern.

Lighthawk pilot Stan Bialek of Aspen took a flight over the Northern and Southern Red Desert including the regions west of Rawlins and both north and south of Wamsutter. The flight gave a perspective of oil and gas field development in the Wamsutter area and a view of the nearly pristine Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area and lands south of there that are now being evaluated for wilderness potential, before flying over Powder Rim. That region has some primitive roads as well as isolated wildcat wells, but it remains fairly undeveloped as well.

While flying from Powder Rim back to Rawlins, Clanahan said any successful effort to preserve the Powder Rim area for its role as a wildlife linkage area, must involve conservation groups as well as private land owners, local officials, and both state and federal agencies.

During the flight, Molvar said oil and gas, as well as coalbed methane development projects, threaten the wildlife and plant vitality in the area. He said the conservation proposal for energy development calls for use of newer drilling techniques, such as directional drilling. That type of practice limits the surface disturbance from energy projects, while at the same time allowing for development of resources, he said. Energy companies already use some directional drilling in order to reach resources, but so far they have not implemented such practices simply to reduce impacts to the environment, he said.

The need to link important ecosystems - such as national parks and wilderness areas - with other places that provide important wildlife habitat, is becoming apparent to researchers and scientists, according to Clanahan. "Conservation biologists now agree that protecting isolated pockets of habitat isn't enough to ensure the health [of] ecosystems - the only way to protect them is to practice conservation on a continental scale," she said.

Because of its location and the potential for development that could affect wildlife species, Molvar said the Powder Rim area is critical and that his organization and other conservation groups will work particularly hard to preserve it.

Although BCA is not seeking any type of wilderness designation for the Powder Rim area, Molvar said it has been identified as an area of critical environmental concern in the Bureau of Land Management's Great Divide Resource Management Plan. As a result, Molvar said conservationists are not suggesting it be withdrawn from leasing, but they believe that approval of any lease should be allowed only if there is no surface disturbance.

If conventional development is allowed of the Desolation Flats coalbed methane project - which calls for 3,880 wells spaced with one on every 80 acres in the project area - it would "pretty much take out this entire linkage," Molvar said during the flight.

"It's really the roads that are the big deal, because of the traffic." He said roads bring people to an otherwise isolated area, and they also create dust and noise that affect various species of wildlife, ranging from sage grouse and songbirds to elk.