From the Wednesday, August 6, 2008 online edition of The Guardian, a widely-read British newspaper . . .

It has been called one of North America’s wildest places. Just north of the US-Canada border, the wooded slopes of the Canadian Rockies channel unpolluted water into a valley that remains free of human development. Grizzly bears, cougars and wolverines prowl the banks of the Flathead river. Outside of a national park, there is probably no wilderness like it on the continent.

But outside of a national park could mean outside of legal protection. Somewhere in the workings of the British Columbia government, an application from global energy company BP is working its way around civil servants’ desks. In it, the firm outlines a proposal that has horrified local environmentalists: the installation of up to 1,500 gas wells covering an area of 500 sq km (310 sq miles) amid the lush 1,580 sq km wilderness of the Flathead. Some time during the next six months, officials may give approval to the project.

“There have to be some places on the planet where you don’t go for energy production,” says Jack Stanford, a biologist at the nearby University of Montana. “This is one of them.”

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