Missoula News

Rocky Mountain front

Gloria Flora: ‘Yahoo’ To Burns Ban on Oil and Gas on Montana’s Front

By Courtney Lowery, 7-05-06

Gloria Flora, the grandmother of the movement to protect Montana's Rocky Mountain Front from oil and gas exploration, says quite simply, "yahoo" to Sen. Conrad Burns' move last week to protect the area from oil and gas drilling.

"I'm as pleased as can be," Flora said in an interview this week.

Flora was in the Bob Marshall Wilderness when the news broke that Burns had inserted language into the Interior Appropriations Bill that would ban all new oil and gas leases on the Front. As the Supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in 1997, Flora banned oil and gas development in the area, but existing leases in the Blackleaf Canyon and the Badger-Two Medicine area bordering Glacier National Park remained.

Under the Burns measure, no new leases would be allowed in those areas and existing leases would not be open for re-leasing if donated, sold or swapped. Just a day after Burns inserted the language, Trout Unlimited announced Questar E&P, an energy company, had donated all of its gas leases in the area to the conservation group.

Flora, now a member of the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, said other similar deals are in the works. "Hopefully we'll have more good news," she said.

Before the Burns announcement, lease holders were reluctant to donate holding unless there was a guarantee that they wouldn't be resold or reused. Now, groups are able to give that guarantee, and there are a few more deals, "almost in hand," Flora said.

Flora had a similar response to that of TU's Chris Wood when asked whether the Burns move was just election-year politics. (Burns, in 2002 said it was in the national interest to drill on the Front).

"So what?" Flora said.

"What we have with election pressure is people say, 'I need to get off this fencepost and take a stand,'" she said, adding that really, that pressure from constituents is "why we have elections."

Flora admitted it was some of a surprise that Conrad Burns would be at the helm of such protection, but she credited him with listening to Montanans on the issue.

"Conrad Burns and I have never been close," Flora said with a laugh. "I find it satisfying that he's been able to overcome his objections ..."

The case is not so, however for Rep. Denny Rehberg. As Jennifer McKee reported over the holiday, Rehberg is breaking with Burns, announcing that he thinks it "unwise to summarily close off areas that could be part of an energy solution for our country."

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