CHEYENNE - Plans to lease or drill wells in remote areas of southwest Wyoming are drawing protests from conservation groups, religious leaders, hunters, Native American groups and others.

An oil and gas company is seeking approval from the Bureau of Land Management to drill four wells in the Adobe Town badlands area of the southern Red Desert near the Colorado border.

On the northern end of the Red Desert, the BLM is proposing to sell leases that include some in the Jack Morrow Hills, about 35 miles north of Rock Springs. The agency also is looking at leases in the popular Little Mountain hunting ground south of Rock Springs.

Erik Molvar, wildlife biologist with the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said it appears there is a rush to open as much federal land to oil and gas development before the Bush administration leaves office and a "more balanced management has an opportunity to take hold."

Samson Investment Co. of Tulsa, Okla., owns leases in the Adobe Town area that are scheduled to expire next February. Leases expire after 10 years if there is no activity.

The leases are just north of a wilderness study area.

BLM spokeswoman Lorraine Keith said the agency cannot prohibit the drilling because the leases were already sold.

However, the BLM can require certain restrictions for Samson to follow in order to reduce damage to the environment and habitat.

"They do have stipulations for raptor nesting and for visual resource management on them," Keith said.

The proposed wells are in four separate areas but Samson has asked that they be counted as a single development so that if it drills on just one lease the other leases will not expire, Keith said.

Molvar said the drilling would be done in "one of the wildest parts of Adobe Town and one of the most remote."

Conservationists say the Adobe Town area has significant historical, archaeological, wildlife and scenic values that should be protected from minerals development.

The state Environmental Quality Council recently designated about 180,000 acres in and around the Adobe Town area as "very rare and uncommon" but the designation does not prevent oil and gas leasing and development.

Molvar said others opposed to the Adobe Town drilling include members of the Wyoming Association of Churches, the Wind River Alliance, the Wyoming Building Trades Council, the Wyoming AFL-CIO, the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Wyoming Wilderness Association.

Molvar said his group and the Wyoming Outdoor Council also plan to protest selling oil and gas leases in the Little Mountain and Jack Morrow Hills areas during a BLM auction scheduled for December.

"There are some places in Wyoming that are sufficiently sensitive or important enough to the public that they simply shouldn't be doing industrial scale oil and gas development at all, and Little Mountain and the Jack Morrow Hills are definitely two of those places," he said.

Keith noted there has been previous drilling in Jack Morrow Hills and the BLM is aware that areas need protection, including one large area designated as a wilderness study area.

"That central area that was deemed to be the most sensitive, we're not offering any more leases in that portion of Jack Morrow Hills," she said.

As for the Little Mountain area, there are few pre-existing restrictions on exploration, which limits the BLM's ability to prevent it, she said.