The battle over whether to industrialize Montana’s
Rocky Mountain Front has heated up, thanks to a proposal from the
Forest Service to allow new oil and gas leases in the Lewis and
Clark National Forest.
The preferred alternative
in a draft environmental impact statement would make 52 percent of
the 1.8 million-acre forest available for leasing, says Forest
Supervisor Gloria Flora.
But in a recent press
release, the Forest Service also says its plan would protect 91
percent of what it called the “Rocky Mountain Division.” Gene Sentz
of Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front says the agency’s 91 percent
figure misleads people, since half the “Division” includes the Bob
Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness, and wilderness cannot be
leased.
“I’m concerned the Forest Service has
confused the public into thinking the Front is protected, when it
isn’t,” Sentz says.
The argument over numbers is
just one facet of the debate which continued during six public
hearings held throughout Montana during September. At five of the
hearings, participants overwhelmingly opposed the agency’s leasing
option, citing the potential impact of new roads, pipelines and
wells on elk and mule deer herds, bighorn sheep and grizzlies that
migrate to the Front’s plains in winter. Outfitters such as Lass
Miels, from Augusta, Mont., called the Front a “lifeline for
free-ranging wildlife that must not be cut.” She and other locals
told the Forest Service that the eastern Rockies might not be
officially designated wilderness, but that fact doesn’t register
with bears and big game.
Only in Billings did
industry supporters outnumber opponents, arguing development would
bring jobs and needed oil and gas resources to the
region.
This isn’t the first time that the
eastern edge of the Rockies, which borders the Bob Marshall
Wilderness to the west and Glacier National Park to the north, has
been targeted for development. John Gatchell of the Montana
Wilderness Association says the public has been fighting oil and
gas drilling in the area for 20 years.
In 1993,
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt responded to protests by
temporarily suspending activity on leases in the Badger-Two
Medicine section of the Lewis and Clark Forest (HCN, 6/26/95). The
Forest Service’s draft EIS, however, fails to address problems
created by these existing leases, says Jennifer Ferenstein of the
Alliance for the Wild Rockies. Though Babbitt continues to suspend
the leases year by year, the moratorium will eventually end, she
says. When it does, the leases will still have three to seven years
left, she says.
Opponents of oil and gas
development are pushing for the designation of the entire area as
“unavailable for leasing” under the no-action
alternative.
Because of interest in the draft
EIS, the comment period has been extended to Dec. 11. For more
information or to comment, write to Supervisor Gloria Flora, Lewis
and Clark National Forest, P.O. Box 869, Great Falls, MT 59403.
*Katie Fesus
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Urgent news from the front.
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