For more than 10,000 years, the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park in Montana has provided strength, subsistence, and cultural identity for members of the Blackfeet Nation. But the Blackfeet aren’t the only ones who value the region. Oil and gas companies long sought to drill here. And they got a toe-hold in the form of leases issued by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. Over the next 40 years, Tribal leaders, conservationists, hunters and anglers, and other Montanans banded together to prevent drilling in this wild, roadless area of national forest lands. Their persistence and tenacity finally paid off. A settlement announced on Sept 1, 2023, permanently retired the last of the leases. More INFO.