For Immediate Release

September 1, 2023

MCV: “The Last Best Place keeps getting better!” 
U.S. Departments of Interior and Agriculture announce permanent protection of the Badger-Two Medicine 

(HELENA, Mont.) – Today Montana Conservation Voters released the following statement from Executive Director Whitney Tawney in response to the announcement by the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture that, as part of a settlement with the sole remaining lessee, the final federal oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area will be relinquished: 

“With action like this, the Last Best Place keeps getting better! Montanans are indebted to decades of work by Blackfeet Tribal leaders and many dedicated conservationists that led to this historic moment. We thank Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for recognizing the importance of this landscape and working tirelessly to make sure development will never happen.” 

The Badger-Two Medicine area encompasses approximately 130,000 pristine acres in Lewis and Clark National Forest, adjacent to Glacier National Park, two wilderness areas, and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Badger-Two Medicine was once a part of the Reservation, and the area is sacred to the Blackfeet Nation which has consistently raised the alarm about oil and gas development and what that would do to the landscape. 

In 2006, at the urging of Montana U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, Congress banned new leases on the Rocky Mountain 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-Two Medicine. Over the next several years, most of those leaseholders also voluntarily relinquished those claims recognizing the cultural and ecological significance of the area. In 2016, the Department of the Interior canceled the remaining leases, which led to a legal challenge culminating in today’s news, bringing to a close a 40–year fight to protect the area from oil and gas development.