(406) 586-9699
Bozeman, MT
nroffice@earthjustice.org
Media Inquiries
Perry Wheeler
Public Affairs and Communications Strategist
pwheeler@earthjustice.org
Legal Assistance Inquiries
Contacto de Prensa
Robert Valencia
Estratega de Comunicaciones y Asuntos Públicos Hispanos/Latinos
rvalencia@earthjustice.org
The Northern Rockies office protects large, intact ecosystems and seeks to build ecosystem resilience by reducing pressures caused by oil and gas development, logging, road building, and off-road vehicle traffic.
Our Impact
The Northern Rockies region boasts some of our nation’s last great wild places. Its magnificent landscapes provide opportunities for both recreation and solitude; its resources have provided sustenance to human communities for thousands of years.
Its intact, healthy ecosystems — the Greater Yellowstone, Crown of the Continent, and Salmon-Selway — are key refuges for wildlife. But they are also under increasing stress from habitat fragmentation, destructive development, and rapid global climate change. Responding to these challenges is a hallmark of Earthjustice. See a few of the cases of the Northern Rockies office.
The Northern Rockies region offers a last glimpse of wild lands and wildlife that have been eliminated from most of the world.
We are committed to ensuring that our nation’s irreplaceable wild places and wildlife are preserved for future generations.
Highlights of Our Work
Wildlife species that the Northern Rockies office works to protect include:
- Gray Wolves: Earthjustice’s legal team has been battling for 20 years to protect the gray wolf, a critical species in Northern Rockies ecosystems.
- Grizzly Bears: For decades, Earthjustice has stood at the forefront of efforts to protect and recover grizzly bear populations in the Northern Rockies under the Endangered Species Act.
- Wolverines: Federal agency inaction to established protections for wolverines have led advocates to repeatedly turn to the courts for enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. Earthjustice, and the groups we represent, have won every case we have filed on behalf of the wolverine, either through judicial rulings in their favor or through favorable settlement agreements.
Badger-Two Medicine Oil & Gas Lease
- The Badger-Two Medicine region, adjacent to Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana, is a dramatic and ecologically important wild landscape. Encompassing 130,000 acres of national forest land, the region is almost entirely roadless and a crucial wildlife movement corridor. The Badger-Two Medicine region is of special cultural importance to the Blackfoot Tribe.
- The federal government issued oil and gas leases in 1982 in a key part of the Badger-Two Medicine region, but later suspended all activity in the area in response to public and Tribal opposition to drilling.
- However, one of the lease holders sued in 2013 to force the government to allow immediate drilling in the region. Drilling would pose grave environmental risks to these ecologically important wildlands.
- A seven-year successful legal fight resulted in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upholding the cancellation of the last remaining federal oil and gas lease in Badger Two-Medicine.
