Recently, the United States Bureau of Land Management announced a Scoping Period on parcels in the Marietta Unit of Wayne National Forest that the agency plans to auction for oil and gas drilling next September. The deadline for public comments is 5pm on January 15, 2026 (this Thursday).
The parcels slated for auction are located in Washington and Monroe Counties near New Matamoras. Some hiking and mountain biking trails are within the parcels. View a map below. The Scoping Period is the public’s opportunity to weigh in on direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts to the area that this oil and gas drilling would have. It is critical that we make our voices heard and make it clear that the public believes this plan to jeopardize this beautiful, natural area for the benefit of a few is unacceptable. Please take action before the deadline and submit a comment. It is especially important to specifically ask for an extension to the comment period due to it being held over the holidays and BLM not providing enough details for people to make meaningful site specific comments.
This comment period is your opportunity to voice your concerns about direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts. If you’re familiar with the area, be sure to share your personal experience and what you have observed there. If you haven’t visited the area, your voice still matters. Harms to this area impact the air, land, and water that we all rely on. The climate impacts of both fracking and forest degradation affect us all.
Click HERE to Submit a comment!
Be sure to click “Participate Now” in order to get to the comment box!
Here are some talking points when making your comment (please personalize your message!)
Talking Points BLM Public Scoping for Sept 2026 WNF Lease Sale
- The public does not want the Wayne National Forest to be leased for fracking. For years members of the public have voiced their opposition to fracking in Wayne National Forest. Thousands of people signed a petition started by Marietta residents and hundreds participated in subsequent actions including writing protest letters, calling and emailing legislators, rallying at the Wayne National Forest Headquarters, writing letters to the editor, and participating in citizen science events. Very few people have come out in support of the leasing.
- Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management due to the agency’s failure to fully consider the impacts of leasing these parcels for fracking. The Bureau of Land Management lost a previous lawsuit and had to write a Supplemental Environmental Assessment to address the impacts the agency neglected to consider in the original Environmental Assessment. The Supplemental Assessment does not adequately address these issues, and the agency is therefore still not in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Leasing should be paused until the lawsuit has been ruled on.
- The Bureau of Land Management planning page for this scoping period does not provide adequate information about the locations or characteristics of the parcels slated for auction. The static map does not show the topography, waterways, or most of the roads in the area and no coordinates for the parcel locations were provided. The public cannot properly assess the impacts without detailed information about the areas that will be leased. It is extremely difficult to do site visits to gather information without more information about the specific location and ownership of adjacent property. BLM should provide detailed, site-specific information and should reopen the comment period after doing so.
- The scoping comment period was scheduled during the holidays, when it’s difficult for members of the public to get informed and take action. The month-long comment period was announced just ten days before Christmas and closes January 15th. Scheduling it over the holidays gave the public only 22 business days to gather information, draft and submit comments, and for many members of the public, some of those days were spent traveling or otherwise preparing for holiday time spent with friends and family. Members of the public deserve more time to participate in scoping and the comment period should therefore be extended.
- Wayne National Forest is still using an outdated Forest Management Plan from 2006, which does not reflect contemporary science or conditions.
- Forest Management Plans are supposed to be updated every ten years, and Wayne National Forest began the process of drafting a new plan in 2018, but abandoned the project after community members volunteered their time attending meetings and providing input for a year and a half.
- In 2012 the sheepnose mussel and snuffbox mussel, which may be present in waterways in WNF, were classified as endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and in 2015, the Northern long-eared bat was listed as threatened due to population decline resulting from white-nose syndrome.
The Wayne National Forest supervisor should not be able to consent to the leasing of these parcels without an up-to-date management plan.
For some historical context on this situation, please see the background information below:
On March 13, 2020, environmental groups celebrated a major victory when a U.S. District Judge Michael Watson ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) must redo the Environmental Assessment which, according to the agencies, justified a Finding Of No Significant Impact for leasing up to 40,000 acres of public lands in Wayne National Forest (WNF) for fracking.
The decision followed a four-year fight with Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Heartwood, Ohio Environmental Council, and Sierra Club taking up the legal battle, and numerous grassroots groups and individuals all over Ohio and beyond, doing everything from petition drives and letter-writing campaigns, to bioblitzes, to protesting outside of Wayne National Forest Headquarters in Athens
In April, 2024 BLM and USFS released a plan, which was, according to a CBD press release, “nearly identical to the fracking plan blocked in 2020….”
At a 2024 Wayne National Forest Virtual Public Hearing on the plan, long-time Athens County activist Roxanne Groff reminded WNF staff and other listeners that the court had ruled that the agencies must take a hard look at the impacts of fracking in Wayne National Forest. “So far, what I’ve read leads me to believe you’ve not really done that, since you’re still using the 2006 planning document that was outdated when you started the process in 2012.”
Groff went on to recount the Forest Plan Revision process that WNF began in 2018, and then abandoned, after members of the public spent a year and a half attending meetings and providing input. She then listed examples of recent scientific findings and data from Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) that the agencies failed to consider.
The oil and gas industry has promised that fracking would bring economic prosperity to the area, but according to Ohio River Valley Institute’s report Frackallachia update 2025, this has not panned out:
Between 2008, prior to the start of the Appalachian natural gas boom, and 2023, GDP in the 30 principal gas-producing counties of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia grew nearly 13% faster than that of the nation. But the growth in GDP masked the dismal real-world economy in the region:
● The number of jobs based in Frackalachian counties fell by one percent even as it grew 14% nationally.
● Incomes in the Appalachian natural gas counties grew at a rate that was only three-quarters that of national income growth.
● The Appalachian natural gas counties’ population declined by 3% while the nation’s population grew by 10%.
Click here to view the full report
Not only has this industry failed to deliver economically, but since the inception of the fracking boom in the area, Appalachian Ohio has suffered more than its share of gas and oil industry incidents, and the southeastern corner of the state where the Marietta Unit of Wayne National Forest, which contains most of the parcels slated for auction, has seen some of the worst, such as the 2014 Statoil Well Pad fire in Monroe County, the 2018 XTO Energy well pad explosion and gas leak in Belmont County, the 2019 Enbridge Pipeline explosion in Noble County, which injured one child and one adult and damaged three homes, and the 2021 orphan well crude oil leak at Veto Lake in Washington County. In August of this year an explosion at an orphan well killed one of the workers who was attempting to cap it, and injured five others.
The Marietta Unit, known for its hiking and mountain biking trails, provides critical habitat for Federally endangered species like the Indiana bat. Evidence of black bear, which is a state endangered species, has recently been found at Archers Fork, just a few miles southwest of some of the parcels slated for auction.
ODNR Reported Finding Bear Tracks
On December 3, The Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, Heartwood, Ohio Environmental Council, and the Sierra Club filed a new lawsuit, stating:
The Court’s previous order held that Defendants failed to take NEPA’s required “hard look” at the impacts of fracking in the Wayne. But Defendants’ FSEA does not remedy the hard look failures identified by the Court and therefore was not completed “in accordance with the Court’s previous Opinion and Order.”
Don’t forget to submit a comment for this scoping period by January 15th!