“Continental Divide”
By Scott McMillion
Nature Conservancy Magazine
Summer, 2011
Can two countries come together to save a pristine valley?
Excerpt:
Yet isolated though it is by geography, bad roads and weather, the North Fork has been at the center of some of the continent’s thorniest struggles over development.
For a century, people have tried to pull fossil fuels from the ground beneath the valley—on both sides of the border—without much success. A well drilled in the early 20th century in what is now Glacier National Park didn’t produce. During a spike in energy prices in the 1970s and 1980s, oil companies punched deep holes on the Canadian side of the border, seeking oil and gas. In Montana, oil and natural-gas developers purchased rights to drill along parts of the river. In the end, however, the prospective cost of building a permanent mining infrastructure up the wild, 80-mile valley kept the drilling rigs at bay.
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