Robert Redford has joined the chorus of opposition to the Bureau of Land Management's sneaky plan to lease wilderness areas in eastern Utah for oil and gas exploration.

In his first blog entry on the left-leaning Huffington Post, the actor/director/environmentalist decried the BLM for "cynically" announcing the lease sale on Nov. 4 - Election Day.

"The BLM didn't just try to slip the audacious Utah lease maneuver past the American people on an historic election day, it actually hid the ball from its sister agency, the National Park Service, and then rejected the Service's request for more time to review the scheme," Redford wrote.

"Words alone cannot do justice to the beauty of these places, but they do capture the absurdity of the Bush plan," Redford continues. "Oil and gas drilling in Desolation Canyon? Industrial development along the meandering Green River? The thought makes one wince."