On Friday June 8, 2007 Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the Federal Court for the District of Idaho awarded Western Watersheds Project a stunning victory in an Order overturning the Bush Administration’s grazing regulations for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) affecting over 160,000,000 acres of public lands in eleven western states.
The grazing regulations that have now been found illegal in this Court decision under three major federal statutes (NEPA, FLPMA and the Endangered Species Act) would have effectively returned the management of public lands managed by the BLM to the days before the Bruce Babbitt regulatory changes of 1995 that final broke open the stranglehold of good-old-boy ranchers on public lands.
Thanks are due to the very hard work on this critically important case to WWP’s Utah Director Dr. John Carter and WWP’s Biodiversity Director Katie Fite who were directly quoted in Judge Winmill’s Order. Thank you John and Katie !
WWP also received the best possible legal representation in the case from our legal counsel Laird Lucas, the executive director of Advocates For The West in Boise (http://www.advocateswest.org) and Advocates attorneys Laurie Rule and Todd Tucci. Thank you Laird, Todd and Laurie !!
Here are two articles from this weekend about the WWP victory:
By REBECCA BOONE
Associated Press writer Sunday, June 10, 2007
BOISE, Idaho -- In a ruling that harshly criticized the Bureau of Land Management, a federal judge on Friday blocked the agency's new grazing rules, saying it had given in to pressure from the livestock industry.
The BLM violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled.
Winmill's 52-age ruling said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on millions of acres of public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations.
"While the BLM justifies the changes as making it more efficient, the BLM was not their originator -- it was the grazing industry and its supporters that first proposed them," Winmill wrote.
"Past BLM regulations imposed restrictions on grazing and increased the opportunities for public input to reverse decades of grazing damage to public lands," Winmill wrote. "Without any showing of improvement, the new BLM regulations loosen restrictions on grazing.
"They limit public input from the non-ranching public, offer ranchers more rights on BLM land, restrict the BLM's monitoring of grazing damage, extend the deadlines for corrective action, and dilute the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations."
He ruled in a lawsuit brought two years ago by the environmental group Western Watersheds Project to challenge the revisions.
"The judge saw it for what it was, which was BLM's efforts to ignore its own scientists, freeze out the public and transfer ownership of public resources to the livestock industry -- all of which would cause pernicious effects on threatened and endangered species," said Todd Tucci, an attorney representing Western Watershed Project.
Erik Molvar, executive director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, said Wyoming rangelands and wildlife have benefited in the past from public involvement in NEPA reviews of BLM grazing plans.
“I don’t see it as an imposition,” Molvar said.
Matt Spangler, a BLM spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the agency had just received the ruling and could not yet comment. Andrew Anes, spokesman for the Department of Justice, also said the decision was under review and that he could not comment.
Many of the revisions in the grazing rules were contrary to the findings of a team of BLM scientists who reviewed the environmental impact of the rules. The scientists found that the new regulations would have a slow but long-term effect on wildlife and biological diversity and that they would harm upland and riparian habitats.
The scientists concluded that the changes would have a "very long-lasting adverse effect to the wildlife of the public lands of the West."
But BLM officials then created a separate team of employees to review the scientists' report, Winmill said, and those employees deleted or softened the scientists' findings in the BLM's draft environmental impact statement.
Winmill also found fault with the rules themselves. The BLM reduced the number of interested parties that would be given notice of grazing allotment issues, and stopped consulting, cooperating and coordinating with the interested public at all on several types of allotment changes.
"The changes substantially affect both the amount and quality of public input," Winmill said.
The rules would have allowed the agency to rely only on limited data when reviewing potential grazing problems, and stretched the time given to address those problems to up to three years.
While the BLM is "reluctant to convict cattle of grazing damage, the BLM is not hesitant to acquit," Winmill said. "The BLM never explains that distinction."
The judge said the revised regulations will not take effect until the BLM receives consultation from the Fish and Wildlife Service as required under the Endangered Species Act and takes a hard look at the potential environmental impacts of the grazing changes.
"The BLM is changing course here," Winmill said. "While the 1995 regulations erected protections against grazing damage and guarded against delay, the revisions at issue here promote delay."
The bureau must explain itself so the public and lawmakers can determine if that change in course is acceptable, Winmill said.
Star-Tribune correspondent Brodie Farquhar contributed to this report
Dan Berman, E&Enews PM senior reporter, June 8, 2007
A federal judge in Idaho enjoined the Bureau of Land Management today from implementing revised grazing regulations, saying the agency adopted industry suggestions without heeding comments from the public or Fish and Wildlife Service.
In a strongly worded opinion, Idaho District Judge B. Lynn Winmill sided with the Western Watersheds Project's contention that BLM's rules violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
"Past BLM regulations imposed restrictions on grazing and increased the opportunities for public input to reverse decades of grazing damage to public lands," Winmill wrote. "Without any showing of improvement, the new BLM regulations loosen restrictions on grazing.
"They limit public input from the non-ranching public, offer ranchers more rights on BLM land, restrict the BLM's monitoring of grazing damage, extend the deadlines for corrective action, and dilute the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations."
Todd Tucci, an attorney with Advocates for the West, called Winmill's ruling "a stunning rebuke of the BLM."
The final regulation, unveiled last summer, directs BLM to consider the "social, cultural and economic effects" of decisions regarding livestock in environmental studies and gives ranchers title over permanent rangeland improvements such as fences, wells and pipelines.
BLM spokesman Matt Spangler said the agency was reviewing the decision.
Winmill had temporarily enjoined the regulations last summer in advance of arguments from the agency and environmental groups, and he was not happy with what he saw, especially that grazing interests first proposed the regulations.
"Certainly the industry has a vital interest in being regulated efficiently, but the new regulations reach far beyond that prosaic purpose," Winmill wrote. "According to the federal agency charged with protecting endangered species -- the Fish and Wildlife Service -- the new regulations 'fundamentally change the way BLM lands are managed,' and 'could have profound impacts on wildlife resources.'
"After thoroughly reviewing the extensive Administrative Record in this case, the court finds that this assessment of the Fish and Wildlife Service is accurate," Winmill said.
The injunction will remain until BLM consults with the service on potential effects on endangered and threatened species and conducts further NEPA analysis of environmental impacts.
This great victory for Western Watersheds Project and all Americans continues a string of defeats for the Bush Administration in regard to compliance with bedrock American environmental laws as shown in the following federal court decisions:
U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Laporte in California reinstated a ban on most commercial and development activities in Western roadless areas. They will remain open to hunting, hiking and horseback riding, but not to drilling and logging.
U.S. District Judge James Singleton found that that the Interior Department failed to consider the impact on wildlife, particularly caribou, in a plan to drill for oil and gas in the Teshekpuk Lake area in northern Alaska.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled that the Bureau of Land Management did not consider an earlier analysis of an area of Utah before planning to sell oil and gas leases. The previous government report, done during the Clinton administration, said the area is pristine and could qualify as a federally protected wilderness area if Congress chose to designate it.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Forest Service’s plan for commercial logging in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument “trampled the applicable environmental laws.” Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Bruce R. Harris found that the Bureau of Land Management ignored air-quality and wildlife data, particularly about an endangered lynx, before selling energy leases on national forest land in western Wyoming.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy found that the Fish and Wildlife Service had ignored “substantial scientific information that would lead a reasonable person to conclude” that wolverines may be endangered or threatened. He ordered the agency to look into the matter for a year.