The BLM has announced an oil and gas lease auction for land near Canyonlands National Park/Kurt Repanshek file

Conservationists are warning that an oil and gas lease auction the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has scheduled for September includes parcels near Canyonlands National Park in Utah, some which could be seen from the park's Horseshoe Canyon annex.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the lease auction affects nealry 160,000 acres near Canyonlands. The BLM offered a 10-day period for comment that ends August 6. 

“Rather than striking a balance between energy development and national park protection, this administration continues to lease first, and ask questions later. Cutting out the public from public lands decisions is having serious impacts in Utah and this time puts Canyonlands, one of the nation’s iconic national parks, at risk," said Jerry Otero, NPCA's Southwest energy program manager. “The exclusion of a public comment period on the anticipated environmental impacts from development on lands that will affect Canyonlands National Park, which sees nearly 800,000 visitors, is backwards.

“What are we saying about the value of our parks when we are willing to risk these unique landscapes and protected places for the sake of short-term development?," he added. "The BLM must seriously weigh the many non-drilling uses of shared landscapes that are critical to supporting the immediate and long-term integrity of these special places.”

Canyonlands National Park, a designated International Dark Sky Park, welcomed more than 740,000 visitors in 2017. Visitors contributed more than $44 million in tourism spending to local economies and supported more than 600 jobs. The larger constellation of leases puts at risk the remote nature of the area and its dark skies and natural quiet, in addition to elevating air pollution by drastically increasing industrial traffic on rural roads in southern Utah, NPCA said.

This lease sale by the BLM adds to a growing list of proposed oil and gas development on BLM land near national parks, which since the start of 2017 has included parcels near Dinosaur and Hovenweep national monuments, and Zion, Great Sand Dunes, and Theodore Roosevelt national parks.