Not quite true. You have to build roads into the area and create a drilling pad several hundred feet square for the drilling rig, mud pits (closed loop), support equipment, frac tanks, etc. A surface casing will be drilled and installed to protect fresh water.
When all equipment has left you will have an unobtrusive well head, an oil/gas/water separator and maybe a couple of small tanks to store water and oil from the well. These days all tanks and such are placed on liners and bermed so that any spills are contained and nothing goes on the ground. A pipeline to connect the wells to a to-be-built compressor station must be dug and buried and then a connection to a pipeline to market must be constructed.
Close off the grasslands from economic development to get back at New Mexicans for voting in a Republican governor. That I say would be the real motivation. The politics of punishment, revenge, and putting independent hard working people in there place is the Obama way.
As somebody who lives in the middle of the Barnett Shale, I can affirm that the environment is essentially unchanged -- a few more gravel roads across a few more pastures, an unobtrusive drilling pad in the middle of the pasture with some plumbing atop it.
Visually, the environment isn't damaged at all. A new barn would leave a bigger footprint.
The enviro-Luddites have been actively trying to make trouble by claiming the drilling is causing groundwater damage, noxious odors and earthquakes (yes, earthquakes).
They have yet to prove a damn thing. And they won't be able to, either. We've been drilling wells in Texas for over a hundred years now.