Exclusive: New rules to limit wind power in Wyoming

A finished wind turbine complex is shown in southern Wyoming on July 21, 2009.

DALLAS (Reuters) - Wind energy development is "functionally precluded" in about 20 percent of Wyoming under new Bureau of Land Management guidelines laid out on Monday to protect a threatened bird, the governor's office said.

"It functionally precludes it (wind power development) in about 20 percent of Wyoming," Ryan Lance, deputy chief of staff to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, told Reuters in a phone interview.

He said the new rules -- which have been lauded by environmental groups such as Audubon which lobbied for them -- also meant that in key areas future developments by the oil and gas industry would be restricted to one pad per square mile.

But Lance said the rules, which came into affect on Monday, should not apply "to existing development. But the reality going forward will be that new developments will have to be relegated to the one oil pad per square mile."

Audubon in a statement on Monday said: "Current rules, which will remain in effect for the 80 percent of Wyoming land outside the core areas, permit as many as 60 well pads per square mile."

The bird that has created all the flap is the sage grouse, an iconic bird of the U.S. west which is threatened by habitat destruction. Lance said about 23 percent of Wyoming is regarded as "core habitat" vital to the bird's survival in the state and that 70 percent of those lands are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Concerns about such regulations had already shrouded some wind projects in uncertainty, such as a 198-turbine $600 million wind farm proposed by Horizon Wind Energy among others.

Environmentalists say that the wind turbines and the development that goes with them, including roads and transmission lines, fragment and disrupt critical sage habitat and disturb the grouse and other wildlife.

Lance said in these key areas wind power projects could come onstream down the road but added that: "The bar is going to be extremely high and you will have to address mortality such that there is no net loss of sage grouse population."

Lance said bringing in such protections for the bird were a way to head off a federal listing under the Endangered Species Act which could see more restrictions slapped on development.

"Ultimately, we are taking the actions that we are taking because we have to find a way to preclude the need to list the species under the Endangered Species Act which would put severe restraints on Wyoming's economy," he said.

(Reporting by Ed Stoddard, Editing by Phil Berlowitz)