The industrial takeover of the West is not about oil or the price of gasoline at the pump. Domestic oil production, in fact, has suffered from a shell game.

Nearly all the drilling on public lands is, in fact, about methane: natural gas. The booty at the wellhead is methane and stockholder cash.

The victims are taxpayers who own public lands - especially hunters and anglers, who've watched as a national legacy is slaughtered like bison.

"While there is little to no relationship between the price of gasoline and development of natural gas on public lands - which is what most of this development has been about, as opposed to oil - our rush to produce short-term energy supplies can have a profound effect on the fish and wildlife habitats and water supplies that define the West," said Chris Wood, a Trout Unlimited executive.

Wood spoke Monday at a phone conference called by Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development. The coalition wants "multiple use" returned to public lands that have been hijacked by a singular abuse.

Mike Dombeck, former chief of the Forest Service and BLM, said oil and gas development have replaced the multiple-use mandate of public lands in seven years.

The bitter results have been pollution, habitat loss and the crippling of tourism.

The damage is most obvious near Pinedale, Wyo., where mule deer numbers have declined 46 percent in five years, pronghorn have been locked out of migration corridors and air pollution is rife. A similar cloud is building a few miles to the south, in the Piceance Basin, once known as Colorado's "deer factory."

Sportsmen for Responsible Energy says "drilling hysteria" is leading to the destruction of a culture that enlists six million hunters and anglers and sustains a $7.4 billion recreational economy in five Western states.

The sportsmen's group has unfurled a set of "responsible energy recommendations," without hope that any present shell-game jugglers might pay attention, but with hopes for the next administration. It says it supports drilling, just not irresponsible drilling.

"Managing land is not a short-term thing," Dombeck said. "We're talking about clean water, fish and wildlife, about outdoor recreation, about the long-term future of public lands in the West and opportunities for future generations to hunt and fish."

The group has posted its recommendations at Sportsmen4ResponsibleEnergy.org. John Baughman, former Wyoming Game and Fish Department director, gave seven broad recommendations.

* Reaffirm multiple-use management on federal lands.

* Strengthen the leasing and permitting process to eliminate industry's "defacto property right" until a detailed conservation plan is in place for sites.

* Implement new measures for monitoring the effects of oil and gas development.

* Make comprehensive mitigation and reclamation of natural resources a fixture in all leasing and development decisions.

* Remove exemptions from the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, which developers have enjoyed since the Bush administration passed the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

* Use current science as the basis for all decisions in energy development.

* Make industry accountable for the costs due to oil and gas development.

"It's not appropriate to expect sportsmen's dollars from license sales and excise taxes, or the money from existing wildlife programs in BLM and FS, to pick up additional costs that result from oil and gas development," Baughman said.

USE IT OR LOSE IT: Never mind new leases. Industry could nearly double U.S. oil production if it would quit hoarding. The House natural resources committee says oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of already-leased public lands and not drilling it.

Committee chairman Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va., has introduced a bill requiring companies to start drilling or lose their leases.

"As long as oil companies hold oil hostage, they will continue to get away with charging high prices and demanding a greater share of the public's land," Rahall said.