The dramatic red-rock formations of southern Utah -- the prime attractions at both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks -- are found nowhere else in the American West. The same can not be said for the fight over plans to open thousands of acres of public land in the red rock region to energy exploration and production.

Over the past 18 months, the Bush administration has moved to accelerate energy production in the west, calling on federal agencies to expedite drilling and mining applications. Washington's initiative has been embraced by energy companies and land management officials. The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing management plans for millions of acres of open land in the Rocky Mountain states. From the high alpine valleys of Montana to the border grasslands of New Mexico, the energy rush is on.

Environmentalists and others opposed to the drilling plans have won some victories. In Wyoming's Powder River Basin, for instance, an Interior Department court threw out development leases covering 2,500 acres. Facing unrelenting pressure from the Bush administration and an industry hungry to tap land long closed to it, environmental advocates see a long and difficult struggle ahead.

In Montana, for instance, thousands of acres in the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument could suddenly be opened to drilling, the result of a measure introduced in May by a Republican congressman. Mark Wood of the Montana Wilderness Association says the advocates of drilling are on the march.

"There's an attitude among the industry that they should have it all," he says, "that we don't have a right to tell them they can't drill wherever they want to drill."

Kathleen Hennessey and Justin Gerdes contributed to this special report.