In the waning hours of the 109th Congress, lawmakers took the crucial steps needed to pass legislation that will ban future oil and gas leasing on 400,000 acres of National Forest and BLM lands along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front.
The legislation is key to resolving a land-use conflict that has been raging for 29 years.
This milestone is not the end of our campaign to win permanent protection for this singular and spectacular landscape where the Rockies meet the Great Plains, but it is crucial to our efforts to retire 120,000 acres of existing leases, many of which were issued for a dollar an acre with little environmental review in the early 1980s.
This measure not only withdraws the Front from leasing, but also provides tax incentives for existing leaseholders to voluntarily sell their leases for conservation purposes.
Immediate Benefits
In the Front's Blackleaf area, site of the Bush Administration's unprecedented decision to end a drilling project in 2004, the two remaining leaseholders have agreed to sell and donate their leases. These pending deals might have failed without passage of this lease withdrawal legislation, since it ensures that the federal government can never re-lease these lands.
More Work to Be Done
Now we will work to ensure that the Lewis and Clark National Forest adopt a sensible Travel Plan that protects the Front's roadless and wildlife values from motorized recreation. We are also working to retire the existing leases in the Badger-Two Medicine, the northern portion of the Front held sacred by the Blackfeet Nation. Our ultimate goal is to secure a conservation package the covers the Front's roadless lands with Wilderness and other designations that will protect the Front's wildlands and its agricultural heritage for local communities, Montanans and all Americans.
About the Legislation
The Wilderness Society's Northern Rockies Regional Office, working in concert with the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front and our Montana partners, helped bring to the forefront a diverse array of voices-ranchers, outfitters, business owners, sportsmen, equestrians and conservationists-to speak out in support of permanent protection.
Political leaders had no choice but to listen and respond.
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) inserted the Front lease legislation, which codified an administrative leasing moratorium in place since 1997, into a tax extension bill.
Five months earlier, Montana's other senator, Republican Conrad Burns, had proposed an identical measure, except without the tax incentives. Burns inserted his legislation in a spending bill that stalled after the election. As numerous editorials across Montana have expressed, both Senators should be congratulated for this important legislation protecting Montana's Front.
