LANDER -- A diverse and ostensibly powerful alliance of organizations and elected officials has been opposing new oil and gas drilling projects in the Wyoming Range for about three years.

It's unclear what the campaign has yielded, if anything.

Those who have joined to protect the mountain range in the western part of the state are an eclectic group of people and organizations, including Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Republican U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range, the Wilderness Society, the National Outdoor Leadership School, miners, ranchers, outfitters, hunters and even some gas patch workers.

A bill to protect the range, introduced by Barrasso five months ago, would stop the sale of any future leases there, and allow for negotiated buyouts -- and the subsequent permanent retirement of existing leases. But the bill has languished in the Senate, and is still waiting for its first hearing in a subcommittee.

Meanwhile, in what Freudenthal has characterized as "the first domino" toward industrialization of the Wyoming Range, Plains Exploration and Production Co. is moving forward with plans for a 17-pad, 136-well development of legally valid gas leases it owns in the Upper Hoback River Basin, just south of Bondurant.

And 44,700 acres of Wyoming Range land, originally leased for energy development in 2005 and 2006 -- which have been in limbo since just after the sales -- are potentially on track for drilling. The U.S. Forest Service has initiated a new analysis of the potential environmental impact of drilling, and if it reaches the same conclusion it did in its previous analysis, development of the leases would be lawful.

Now, Denver-based Stanley Energy Inc., which owns about half of the contested leases, has proposed a 181-well development program on over 20,000 acres just south of the Plains leases, on the eastern slope of the Wyoming Range.