During the 1970s, the Pigeon River Country State Forest, home to the only substantial wild elk herd east of the Mississippi River, became the scene of one of the longest and most controversial environmental battles in Michigan history. The largest piece of undeveloped state-owned property in the Lower Peninsula, spanning parts of Otsego, Cheboygan, and Montmorency counties, sat atop huge reserves of oil and natural gas at a time of fuel shortages and intense interest in drilling its 91,000 acres. After the Michigan Environmental Protection Act of 1970 gave any person or organization the right to sue to protect natural resources, concerned citizens and environmentalists joined together to stop oil and gas drilling there, arguing that it would harm wildlife, especially the elk. For almost 10 years, the conflict played out through lawsuits, consent orders, legislation, and compromises. A landmark 1979 Michigan Supreme Court case, West Michigan Environmental Action Council, Inc. v Natural Resources Commission, provided guidance on the kind of harm that would justify relief under the act and eventually helped produce an unusual agreement among state government, the oil industry, and environmental groups. That agreement permitted tightly regulated drilling in the southern one-third of the forest under the oversight of the Pigeon River Advisory Council. In the decades that followed, the forest produced valuable oil and gas reserves while the elk herd continued to grow, and the dispute set standards for future oil drilling in Michigan and became a national and international model for resource management.