25 Years of Badlands Conservation Alliance
Celebrating BCA’s Impacts on Wild North Dakota Places
Founded in 1999 during the early public planning process for the Forest Service’s Land and Resource Management Plan for the Dakota Prairie Grasslands, we spoke out for conservation concerns in western North Dakota’s 1-million-acre Little Missouri National Grassland. A tight core of charter members united to raise local voices, ensuring that government agencies and leadership could not deny our call for ecologically functioning landscapes, protection of roadless areas, and designation of Wilderness in our beloved Badlands.
Badlands Conservation Alliance is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the Badlands and rolling prairie ecosystem comprising western North Dakota’s public lands, both state and federal. We provide an independent voice for conservation-minded North Dakotans and others who appreciate this unique Great Plains landscape.
It is also our mission to ensure that the public lands management agencies adhere to the principles of the laws that guide them and provide for wise stewardship of the natural landscapes with which the citizens of the United States have entrusted them — for this and future generations.
On November 13, 2002, Badlands Conservation Alliance was recognized by the federal government as a publicly supported non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. BCA has had three Executive Directors: Jan Swenson (retired in 2019), Dr. Elizabeth Loos (2020–2022) and Shannon Straight (2023–present).
BCA published Prairie Legacy Wilderness: North Dakota Citizen’s Proposal for Wilderness on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands in 2008. The proposal advocates for Wilderness designation of the four Suitable for Wilderness management areas on the Little Missouri National Grassland: Twin Buttes, Kendley Plateau, Bullion Butte and Long X Divide; and an additional 5,400-acre roadless area on the Sheyenne National Grassland located in southeastern ND. The proposal also advocates for Wilderness Study Area designation for the majority of Lone Butte Inventoried Roadless Area. Our annual report from 2010 stated: “Prairie Legacy Wilderness remains BCA’s number one issue. In many ways it reflects all others.” Through 2012, BCA called on ND’s Congressional delegation and Governor to support the proposal while raising awareness among ND’s residents.
In 2001, BCA worked to protect the viewshed of the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). This goal achieved a major victory in 2012 when National Park, Forest Service, and private lands were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the following years, BCA worked with the Elkhorn Strategy Team to defend the Elkhorn Ranch from ongoing threats, including oil and gas development, gravel mining, the proposed bridge crossing of the Little Missouri River in Billings County, and the four-laning and safety of Highway 85.
BCA submitted formal comments on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands Final Environmental Impact Statement and Land and Management Resource Plan in 2002. BCA staff and members wrote letters to the editor and spoke with editorial boards. We defended Suitable for Wilderness areas and Inventoried Roadless Areas, and opposed oil and gas development and superfluous road development. BCA also submitted nominees for the plan’s Scientific Review Team.
BCA has advocated for permanent protection of Inventoried Roadless Areas and has submitted comments supporting the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
BCA has monitored coalbed methane development, including the impacts of carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery.
BCA has monitored development proposals for the Maah Daah Hey Trail since 2002, and we have submitted comments and facilitated meetings with the Forest Service (USFS). Concerns have included mountain bikes in Suitable for Wilderness areas, fragmented bighorn sheep habitats, and trails in Research Natural Areas.
Since 2002, BCA has advocated for Wild and Scenic protection for the Little Missouri River and for strengthening the Little Missouri State Scenic River Act.
In 2004, BCA opposed the merger of the ND Oil and Gas Division with the ND Geological Survey on the grounds that a conflict of interest existed between their respective scientific research and regulatory missions. Although the merger was authorized in 2005, the language used in the legislation favorably reflected changes sought by BCA’s public opposition.
BCA’s first year with a registered lobbyist during the ND legislative session was 2005.
In 2006, 54 oil wells were within one mile of TRNP, and drilling permits were appearing within an eighth of a mile of TRNP including near Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness. Over the last 25 years, BCA has monitored and formally testified against countless drilling permits.
BCA opposed uranium development on the Little Missouri National Grassland (LMNG) in 2008.
In 2009, BCA advocated for the Little Missouri National Grassland Travel Management Plan to significantly reduce road density and close all unauthorized roads.
BCA submitted formal comments during TRNP’s Elk Management planning process in 2009.
BCA opposed Basin Electric’s 2011 proposal for a 345 kV transmission line that would impact Suitable for Wilderness areas and the North Unit of TRNP, and we filed an objection with the USFS which prompted a resolution meeting in Bismarck with seventeen participants, including representatives from the USFS, TRNP, Basin Electric, and Rural Utilities Services.
BCA submitted official comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2012 on the proposed Enbridge Sanish pipeline in western and northern ND. This was an opportunity to voice our concerns with the multiple proposed pipeline crossings of Lake Sakakawea.
BCA opposes the unauthorized bridge in Dunn County that was constructed across the Little Missouri River on BLM land in 2013.
Beginning in 2013, Earthjustice represented BCA in our petition for intervenor status in lawsuits filed by the State of North Dakota and the four counties on the LMNG that claimed ownership of the section lines on those public lands. This would have increased the difficulty of Wilderness designation by allowing roads to be built on section lines. In a significant victory for BCA, US District Court Judge Daniel L. Hovland dismissed the lawsuit on July 26, 2017.
During the 2013 legislative session, BCA testified in favor of an expanded Outdoor Heritage Fund that reflected greater needs for conservation funding than the bill put forward by the Governor and the ND Petroleum Council.
The BCA Board of Directors voted to add our support to the Clean Water, Wildlife and Parks Campaign to place a Constitutional amendment on the November 2014 ballot.
Alongside other like-minded organizations, BCA’s Executive Director and members were closely involved in the creation of the Special Places policy — adopted as the Drilling Permit Review Policy in March 2014 — and supported Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem in an effort to identify and protect portions of western ND’s landscape and noted landmarks from the negative impacts of oil development. BCA board member Clay Jenkinson also met with Stenehjem. The policy identified 18 Areas of Interest (AOI), including the shoreline of Lake Sakakawea, the Little Missouri River corridor, Sentinel Butte, Pretty Butte, and others.
During the following years, BCA monitored the Oil and Gas Division webpage for Applications to Drill (APD) within these AOI on a daily basis; during the strict ten-day time limit following APD publication, BCA submitted comments on all AOI public land applications with the intent to strengthen this policy.
BCA monitored monthly hearing dockets for oil and gas activities before the ND Oil and Gas Division of the ND Department of Mineral Resources, researching cases of note, writing a letter to reserve our place at the table, and providing testimony during the hearing. BCA and TRNP were the two most consistent entities appearing at monthly hearings.
BCA has opposed oil and gas leasing of state school lands within or impacting Suitable for Wilderness and other sensitive habitat that is managed by the ND Department of Trust Lands.
BCA has advocated for decreased flaring of natural gas, adoption of closed systems for reserve pits, increased bonding, development of adequate reclamation practices, tighter regulations, more strident monitoring standards, and attention to environmental and health costs.
In 2015, BCA worked with the World Wildlife Fund and numerous local and national conservation partners to pressure the USFS to protect the LMNG from industrial development following the initial Notice of Intent in 2012 for the Dakota Prairie Grasslands Oil and Gas Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
In 2016, the ND Oil and Gas Division promulgated a new rule: a definition of “interested party,” a previously non-existent term that would determine who could testify at monthly hearings. Only BCA and TRNP regularly testified at monthly hearings and industry attorneys were increasingly aggravated with our presence. BCA’s initiation of protest to this new definition spread widely among labor unions, landowner groups, conservation and environmental organizations, local government, private citizens, royalty owners and landowners. With 468 unique comments submitted, the public overwhelmingly opposed the rule change and the new “interested party” definition was removed.
Collaborating with the World Wildlife Fund, BCA participated in the development of Covenant Consulting Group’s 2016 report titled Stakeholder Assessment of the North Dakota Badlands and Little Missouri River Valley. Following the report’s publication, the Badlands Advisory Group was established.
BCA has opposed the withdrawal of water from the Little Missouri River for industrial use, including fracking; prior to May 2017 it was illegal to withdraw water from the Little Missouri River except for agricultural or recreational purposes. BCA has also worked to defend the Little Missouri River from the use of riprap, an oil waste facility in Bowman County, and the Williston Basin Grasslands Pipeline project.
Since the mid-2000s, Billings County has proposed a bridge or low-water crossing of the Little Missouri River between the South Unit and North Unit of TRNP. BCA was instrumental in the removal of alternatives that would impact the Elkhorn Ranchlands; however, as of 2018, the proposed bridge would impact the historic Short Ranch on private land. The Short family opposes the bridge. In order to protect the ecological integrity and values of the Badlands and Little Missouri River valley, BCA’s position is that the bridge should not be built.
In 2018, after two years of more than thirty in-person presentations around ND, BCA and the North Dakota Wildlife Federation published Keeping All the Pieces, a short documentary about the threats of oil and gas development to the Badlands.
BCA has spoken out for the conservation of wildlife and their habitats, including bighorn sheep, greater sage-grouse, elk, and prairie dogs.
BCA has defended air quality standards in the Badlands from industrial development, including Meridian Energy Group’s Davis Refinery, and has protected the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule from being weakened by ND’s state legislature.
The next 25 years will bring new threats, challenges and victories.
Thank you for being a member of our Alliance.