A petition drive has begun urging the National Park Service to deny Xanterra Parks and Resorts Inc. the main concessions contract for Glacier National Park.
Xanterra could be a potential bidder on the contract to run the park’s major lodges and red bus fleet for the next 16 years.
Xanterra is owned by Philip Frederick Anschutz, who also owns Anschutz Exploration Corp., which has been drilling exploratory oil wells on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation east of the park.
The online petition at www.signon.org has more than 5,000 signatures. It was created by Helena resident Bob Brigham, an Internet consultant who previously worked on political campaigns.
Brigham visits Glacier Park regularly and got the idea after seeing a story detailing the connection between Xanterra and Anschutz.
Brigham said that as he reads it, the concessioner has the duty to preserve and protect the park’s landscape under federal law. With Anschutz drilling on the reservation a few miles from the park, that’s a difficult case to make, he claimed.
Anschutz, however, has decided to halt its exploratory work on the Blackfeet Reservation because the firm hasn’t located enough oil and gas.
“I’m really hoping we can block this,” Brigham said.
Brigham set up the petition so every time someone signs on, an e-mail is automatically sent to National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis.
Glacier Park officials won’t know who’s bidding on the project until they actually submit a proposal, park spokeswoman Denise Germann said, but Xanterra is not precluded.
“We’ll take all the offers we get and go through them accordingly,” Germann said.
A Xanterra spokesman did not comment on the petition.
Brigham said that when he started the petition, he hoped to get 1,000 signatures.
But the petition took off after it was highlighted in the Blackfeet Headwaters Alliance’s Facebook page.
The Alliance is a conservation group opposed to hydraulic-fractured oil wells on the reservation and in support of preserving of water quality.
The park concessions contract would require a more than $33 million investment by any outside company looking to gain the business.
Glacier Park Inc. has held the contract since 1981 and has built up a sizable investment in real property in the park over that time span.
Even so, Xanterra is no stranger to big investments.
It recently retained the Yellowstone National Park lodging concessions contract, which requires a $134 million investment in facility improvements over the course of 20 years.