Wyoming's Red Desert is the highest desert in North America. It is home to the largest migratory ungulate herd in the Lower 48, as well as to one of the nation's healthiest populations of sage grouse, a vanishing species. Unfortunately, it is also home to an estimated 314 trillion cubic feet of coal bed methane (CBM), a form of natural gas. The recent boom in the CBM extraction industry has brought a maze of wells, power lines, roads, pipelines, and compressor stations to southwestern Wyoming, which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management expects will become the nation's leading natural gas producer by 2015. But at what price? Hal Clifford takes a look at CBM extraction and the struggle to save the Red Desert, only on the Grist Magazine website.