Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: 1/10/07

Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and Wyoming Outdoor Council Host
New Documentary Film, February 2

JACKSON HOLE – A new documentary film calls it the biggest land grab in American history, far outstripping the gold rushes and silver strikes that rattled the West in the 19^th Century. This time the oil and gas industry is laying claim to tens of millions of acres of public land throughout the Rocky Mountain West, with Wyoming in the epicenter of the development.

“A Land Out of Time,” a feature documentary produced and directed by Mark Harvey, lays out the vast scale and frantic pace of the rush to drill, telling the story through the ranchers, hunters and outfitters who are being pushed off the land after several generations. The cast includes Wyoming’s legendary Tom Bell and features the Red Desert and Upper Green River Valley.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance will host a screening of the film at the Teton County Library on Feb. 2 at 6:30 p.m. The film will be followed by a short presentation and discussion on conservation efforts regarding oil and gas drilling around Jackson Hole.

“In our travels while making “A Land Out of Time,” we heard the same story again and again: the Federal government has stopped listening to the American public,” Harvey said. “They hold the public hearings mandated by law, take tens of thousands of public comments favoring conservation, and then proceed with energy development as if the hearings never took place.”

Currently the Bureau of Land Management is putting plans in place to approve more than 118,000 new gas and oil wells on public lands in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Montana over the next two decades, which is nearly double the current total number of producing wells on public lands throughout the Rocky Mountains. Approximately 63,000 wells are currently producing on public lands. Wyoming leads the way with 50,528 planned new wells. (Source: The Wilderness Society, Too Wild to Drill.)

“A Land Out of Time” laments the loss of Western heritage to the onslaught of drilling and warns of the threat to the West’s “last, best places” like Wyoming’s Red Desert, New Mexico’s Otero Mesa and Valle Vidal, and Colorado’s Roan Plateau.

“The most contentious battles are over a few relatively small areas that will satisfy American energy demand for only a few days, or at most a few weeks,” Harvey said. “It’s tantamount to burning furniture for firewood.”

The film, which premiered to sold-out screenings at Aspen Film Fest in September, won Best Environmental Film at Taos Mountain Film Festival on October 7 and is scheduled for several more film festivals. The Wyoming Outdoor Council is hosting a series of screenings around Wyoming this winter.

“The Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance are not opposed to all oil and gas drilling,” said the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s outreach coordinator, Andy Blair. “But we do believe that certain areas are too important to be developed and that where development does take place, it should be done in as ecologically sensitive a manner as possible.”

The film’s cinematography, which is by Emmy-winning director of photography Greg Poschman and cinematographer Edgar Boyles, showcases the beauty and grandeur of the Western landscape. Laurel Garrett and Mark Harvey wrote the script, which is narrated by Western historian, author and Wyoming Outdoor Council founder Tom Bell. The film is based on a treatment by New York Times journalist and Pulitzer-prize winner Timothy Egan and was edited by Scott Davis.

More information, and DVDs of the film, are available at www.alandoutoftime.com.

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