The taste stewards of the Blackfeet Nation connected Nov. 2 filed a ineligible situation to a national judge’s caller ruling that restored the past remaining vigor assertion successful the Badger-Two Medicine region, renewing the menace of industrialization connected lands held ineffable to the people adjacent arsenic its taste leaders pledge to determination guardant successful their decades-long fight.
The appeal, filed successful Washington, D.C. by the Pikuni Traditionalist Association (PTA), seeks to support the Badger-Two Medicine country from vigor exploration permitted by an lipid and state lease the Tribe asserts was illegally issued successful the 1980s. The long-disputed vigor lease, which is held by the Louisiana-based institution Solenex LLC, seeks to physique a good pad, a road, and impermanent bridges connected a culturally and ecologically affluent swath of onshore girding Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. After 3 decades of ineligible wrangling, the lease was canceled successful 2016 nether then-U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, a determination upheld by a national appeals tribunal successful 2020.
In September, however, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a ruling successful effect to a suit brought by Solenex, a determination that overturned the Interior’s cancellation. In his ruling, Leon chastened the national agencies that archetypal approved the lease successful 1982 for mounting disconnected “a never-ending bid of administrative reviews [that] person precluded immoderate enactment for astir forty years.”
“How Kafkaesque!” Leon exclaimed successful his ruling, concluding the Solenex lease was decently issued and truthful not taxable to cancellation.
Other vigor companies person voluntarily relinquished their leases successful the 130,000-acre Badger-Two Medicine area, acknowledging that the leases were issued decades agone without capable input from tribal members who raised taste concerns. However, Solenex has continued its ineligible efforts to sphere the drilling rights, arguing successful a suit against the Interior Department that the national bureau exceeded its authorization and the lease should beryllium reinstated.
Judge Leon has rejected the national government’s rationale for cancelling the Solenex lease and disagreed with the claims that drilling and roadbuilding successful the Badger-Two Medicine would irrevocably harm the taste and ecological values of the area, which is simply a designated Traditional Cultural District (TCD).
Blackfeet traditionalists, elders and a big of conservation groups disagree and person promised to proceed the combat to furnish the Badger-Two Medicine with imperishable protections — a ngo that has gained varying degrees of enactment from Montana’s legislature delegation.
PTA subordinate and Montana Rep. Tyson Running-Wolf emphasized that the full Blackfoot Confederacy, the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, which represents tribes crossed the Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, and the National Congress of American Indians, are each lasting unneurotic with the Blackfeet Nation.
“We volition ne'er cede ineffable crushed to those who would defile it,” Running Wolf said. “And it’s not conscionable astir Indian Country, for decades now, Republican and Democratic administrations person supported a lease-free Badger due to the fact that the spot is important to each the radical of Montana.”
Joining the PTA successful appealing the lease reinstatement is simply a conjugation of conservation groups, including: the Blackfeet Headwaters Alliance, Glacier Two Medicine Alliance, National Parks Conservation Association, The Wilderness Society and Wild Montana. The groups accidental they collectively correspond thousands of Montanans who “value the Badger-Two Medicine arsenic a spot of refuge, and actively usage the country for hunting, fishing, hiking, and horseback riding.”
The groups intervened successful the Solenex lawsuit to support the Badger-Two Medicine region. Tim Preso, the Earthjustice lawyer representing the intervenors said successful a prepared connection that the “Solenex lease was illegally issued and we judge the tribunal determination that reinstated it was wrongly decided. We volition proceed to advocator for this chaotic and ineffable scenery until the past menace to its integrity is removed.”
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