Vilsack: Cancel Badger Two Med leases

Citing cultural and environmental concerns, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack late last week recommended that all oil and gas leases in the Badger Two Medicine region just south of Glacier National Park be canceled.

Vilsack made his recommendation in a two-page letter to Department of Interior secretary Sally Jewell.

Solonex, a Lousiana-based energy company, has proposed drilling exploratory wells on a 3,000-plus acre lease it holds on lands about two miles south of Glacier National Park. It recently forced the issue when it sued the DOI in federal court, claiming the agency as well as the Forest Service, had dragged its feet for decades on not allowing the company to drill.

A federal judge agreed and said he might uphold the lease if the land agencies didn’t do something.

Vilsack argues in his letter that much has changed since 1982, when the lease was first granted. The Forest Service has learned more about the region’s cultural significance to the Blackfeet Tribe, for one. Secondly, all future energy leases have been banned in the region and so has most motorized use.

In essence, it’s a wild landscape and the Blackfeet consider its 160,000 acres of mountainous terrain and rolling foothills sacred. It’s home to a large elk herd as well as several endangered or threatened species.

“I recommend that you take action as you deem consistent with your statutory and regulatory authorities to cancel the Solenex lease,” Vilsack wrote to Jewell on Oct. 30.

The final determination, expected later this month, is up to the Department of Interior.

If the leases are somehow upheld, Timothy Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice and other groups, will bring its own legal action, he said Monday.