Badger-Two Medicine (United States)

Photo credit: Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration leased more than 150,000 acres of public land within the Rocky Mountain Front for oil and gas development, and continued to sell leases in the ensuing years. The leases placed a vast swath of roadless lands along the eastern edge of Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness, as well as a pristine 130,000 acre block of land between “the Bob” and Glacier National Park – known as the Badger-Two Medicine – at risk of industrial development. The Badger-Two Medicine is a place of deep cultural and spiritual significance to the Blackfeet Nation.

Almost immediately following the lease sales, the Blackfeet Nation, alongside its partners in the conservation, recreation, and sporting communities, set to work to stop development from destroying this ecologically and culturally significant area. Over the years, this coalition has had remarkable success, including:

• Getting the Badger-Two Medicine and another 270,000 acres along the Rocky Mountain Front permanently withdrawn from future oil and gas leasing in 2006;

• Adding portions of the area to existing wilderness areas in 2014;

• Protecting broad swaths of the open rangelands through conservation easement acquisitions; and,

• Securing donations and relinquishments of all but two of the existing oil and gas leases. 

In October 2019, The Wilderness Society closed a deal to permanently retire the lease held by one of the two remaining leaseholders inside the Badger-Two Medicine. The deal, facilitated by a grant from the Wyss Foundation, retired the company’s 7,640 acre lease holding within the and ensured that this section of the Blackfeet’s traditional homeland remains unspoiled in perpetuity.

In June 2020, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government’s 2015 cancellation of the lease held by another leaseholder – the final remaining lease inside the Badger-Two Medicine – was legal. The leaseholder fought the cancelation and is pursuing additional legal options to reinstate their lease. Meanwhile, advocates are working to see that the area is permanently protected and that the Blackfeet Nation has a meaningful management role in securing their homeland in perpetuity.

Learn more about the ongoing effort to permanently protect the Badger-Two Medicine: “The Path to Conserving 30 Percent of the Planet by 2030: Perspectives from Indigenous and Local Conservation Leaders.”