NFPA member Frank Vitale has a nice op-ed in today’s Daily Inter Lake concerning drilling in the Badger-Two Medicine region . . .

The Blackfeet call it “Mistakis,” the Backbone of the World. The Continental Divide snakes its way through this land also known as the Badger-Two Medicine. It is the cornerstone of the Blackfeet creation story.

I have ridden, hiked and hunted through this area and know it well. It is some of the wildest country in the Northern Rockies. It lies between Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Great Bear Wilderness. It is one of the largest unprotected roadless areas in the state at 165,588 acres.

The Badger-Two Medicine is a rugged, remote, pristine ecosystem that’s home to grizzlies and black bears, wolves, mountain lions, wolverines and lynx. Moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule deer and whitetail deer and one of the largest herds of elk on the northern Rocky Mountain Front (numbering around 800 head) also live here. Its cold rivers and streams support some of the last pure populations of westslope cutthroat trout east of the Continental Divide.

The Badger and Two Medicine rivers spill out on the high prairies. Life zones range from the alpine and montane forests to short-grass prairies where grizzlies and antelope intermix.

This is not a place to drill for oil or gas. No mitigation can avoid the negative impacts of oil and gas exploration in this sacred and wild land.