New bill would permanently protect 130,000 acres of Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine

In the 2017 report that rolled back Bears Ears National Monument, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tacked on a footnote saying that a little-known swath of land in Montana — the Badger-Two Medicine — was worthy of monument status. A staggeringly beautiful landscape bounded by Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Blackfeet Reservation, the Badger-Two Medicine is part of the traditional homeland of the Blackfeet Nation. It’s home to many Blackfeet origin stories, and Tribal members still practice traditional ceremonies there. It’s also important habitat for denning grizzlies and their cubs, rare lynx, wolverines and some of the last genetically pure cutthroat trout on the planet. Now part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, the Badger-Two Medicine has been under threat from oil and gas development for nearly 40 years. Zinke, however, resigned in 2018 before taking action to protect it, and since then, the threat has escalated: William Perry Pendley, lead council for the company suing for oil and gas drilling rights in the Badger-Two Medicine, was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Land Management — the agency that controls oil and gas on public lands. The Blackfeet Nation has since drafted its own legislation to permanently protect its cultural homeland. The Badger-Two Medicine Protection Act, unveiled by the Blackfeet Nation on June 26 and introduced by Montana Sen. Jon Tester, D, July 22, would permanently protect 130,000 acres of the Badger-Two Medicine as a “cultural heritage area”: a first-of-its-kind designation that could potentially usher in a new national system for protecting public lands in Indian Country...MORE