The challenge facing Americans now is not how to increase fossil fuel production-energy companies are already on a record-setting pace as they accelerate development on public and private lands. Rather, the challenge facing us today is how best to protect public health, safety, welfare and our natural heritage in the face of rapid energy development. We support a balanced energy plan that protects water, surface owners (including ranchers and rural residential property owners), sacred sites and wild public lands while meeting the nation's energy demands. Such a plan includes the following elements:

• Protect our wild places: Require public land management agencies to reveal all potential environmental impacts and determine that an area is not eligible for wilderness protection prior to any leasing decision on federal lands. Preserve special places like the Arctic Refuge and proposed wilderness and roadless areas from oil and gas development - 90% of western public lands are already open to drilling. More.

• Protect people's health and safety: Regulate toxic oil and gas field wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Toxics Release Inventory. Prevent any efforts by Congress to exempt hydraulic fracturing "fracing" from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Fracing is a common procedure used to fracture underground formations with toxic fluids under very high pressures to force production of oil and gas.

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This photo was taken near the Roan Plateau, a proposed wilderness area in western Colorado.