Glacier Park supers: cancel leases
If one were to hike in the Badger-Two Medicine region of the Lewis and Clark National Forest right now, they’d likely come upon a sign warning of a grizzly bear prowling in the Sawmill Flats area. The sign is not unusual. The 160,000 acre region on the Lewis and Clark National Forest is not wilderness and isn’t Park Service land, but it is no less wild.
Six retired Glacier Park superintendents want the Department of Interior to keep it that way. In a letter to the Hungry Horse News and other newspapers across the state, they’re asking the Department of Interior to cancel oil and gas leases in the Badger Two Medicine as an energy company pursues legal action to drill exploratory wells on a 3,000-plus acre tract in Hall Creek.
“Industrial energy development of this world-class resource would represent an intolerable assault to the ecological and cultural values of Glacier National Park, as well as to the Blackfeet people,” the superintendents argue. “On behalf of the millions of visitors who cherish the Crown of the Continent, and on behalf of our colleagues whose careers were spent working for the best interests of Glacier National Park, we ask the Department of Interior to exercise its authority to cancel the Badger-Two Medicine leases.”
The letter is signed by Phillip Iverson, Robert Haraden, H. Gilbert Lusk, Suzanne Lewis, Mick Holm and Chas Cartwright.
The leases were sold to the Solonex Corporation in the early 1980s under the Reagan Administration. Opponents claim they were granted illegally because at the time, they did not undergo the proper environmental review. The area is considered sacred by the Blackfeet Tribe.
The superintendents’ letter comes after the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation late last month also recommended the leases by canceled. Solonex, for its part, sued the Department of Interior, claiming the Forest service and other government entities had been delaying its right to drill in the region for decades. A federal judge agreed, and told the agency to begin a formal review process or the court might grant the leases. That has set in motion a schedule of reviews that could last a couple of years, unless the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land management decide to cancel them outright.
There is legal precedent to cancel the leases. Similar leases were granted in the North and Middle forks of the Flathead, but were deemed illegal by the courts decades ago because they did not undergo National Environmental Policy Act review. Like the Badger-Two Medicine, they, too have been in legal limbo ever since.