At Long Last, the Badger-Two Medicine is Permanently Lease-free

Agreement among Tribal leaders, conservation groups, and leaseholder marks the culmination of 40-year saga to save the Rocky Mountain Front from oil and gas development
Looking down on Buffalo Lakes from Lubec Ridge in the Badger-Two Medicine (photo by Gene Sentz)
Looking down on Buffalo Lakes from Lubec Ridge in the Badger-Two Medicine (photo by Gene Sentz)
Category: Badger-Two Medicine | | 4 min read

Today, the 40-year saga to save the Badger-Two Medicine from industrial development came to a definitive close.

Wild Montana, Blackfoot Tribal leaders, and other conservation groups, along with the federal government, finalized an agreement with Solenex, LLC to permanently retire the last remaining federal oil and gas lease on the Rocky Mountain Front and within the Badger.

Nestled among Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, and the Blackfeet Reservation, the Badger plays a paramount role in the culture of the Blackfeet people as the setting of many of its origin stories. The Badger is also a vital home to grizzly bears, Canada lynx, Westslope cutthroat trout, and many other species that make the Crown of the Continent one of the wildest regions in the Lower 48.

Saving the Rocky Mountain Front from any and all oil and gas development was a long time coming, nearly as long as I’ve been alive, demonstrating that we never give up on the places we work to protect. It will forever exemplify the resolve and perseverance of the people of Montana when beloved wild public lands and waters are at risk of industrialization.

– John Todd, Wild Montana executive director

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration leased 147,000 acres along the Rocky Mountain Front, including the Badger-Two Medicine area, for $1 an acre. Encompassing 6,300 acres in the Hall Creek area of the Badger, the Solenex lease was one of 47 located in the Badger.

When the leases were issued, Wild Montana launched a decades-long campaign to rid the Rocky Mountain Front of all leases, joining in support of Blackfeet Tribal leaders to ensure leases were also removed from the Badger. In 2006, at the urging of Sen. Max Baucus, Congress banned new leases on the Front and created tax incentives for companies of existing leases to relinquish them. By 2010, most leaseholders had done so, though 29 leases still remained in the Badger. Over the next several years, most of those leaseholders also voluntarily relinquished those leases in recognition that this area was too culturally and ecologically significant to be industrialized.

But Solenex refused, compelling the Department of the Interior to cancel its lease in 2016 and all other remaining leases in 2017. Solenex challenged the cancellation of its lease in a D.C. District Court. The court ruled in favor of the company and reinstated the lease. With Ryan Zinke at the helm of the Interior Department, the government appealed the ruling, with Wild Montana and our conservation partners joining as intervenors. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s decision and upheld the cancellation of the lease.

We celebrated a lease-free Badger on that day in 2020. But Solenex did not give up.

In December 2020, the company filed a new complaint against the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service in the same district court. The complaint challenged a 2014 government determination that oil and gas leasing in the Badger-Two Medicine would threaten the integrity of the Traditional Cultural District status granted to the Badger because of its historical and cultural importance to the Blackfeet Nation.

The court again ruled in Solenex’s favor and once more reinstated the lease. We again joined with other conservation groups as intervenors in an appeal.

And that’s where this tangled saga stood when negotiations on a settlement began late last year. The settlement agreement announced today ends this decades-long legal dispute before it was about to be reviewed by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a second time.

I hope you take a moment today to let today’s victory sink in. Saving the Rocky Mountain Front from any and all oil and gas development was a long time coming, nearly as long as I’ve been alive, demonstrating that we never give up on the places we work to protect. It will forever exemplify the resolve and perseverance of the people of Montana, especially the Blackfeet, when beloved wild public lands and waters are at risk of industrialization. It will also serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration for the fights we have ahead of us to remove the threat of oil and gas development from other revered lands across the state.

A One-in-a-lifetime Opportunity

It so happens that we now have an opportunity to prevent the leasing of other revered lands. A few weeks ago, the BLM released a proposed rule that brings improvements to a broken federal oil and gas leasing program that has stood in the way of protecting public lands in Montana and across the West, and helps ensure lands like the Badger aren’t also threatened with industrialization. Please join us and submit a comment on the rule today.

 

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