Archive for the ‘Court’ Category
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Current Sage grouse distribution
On March 5, 2010, in response to a court order from an earlier Western Watersheds Project lawsuit, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that Greater Sage-Grouse warranted the protection of the Endangered Species Act but that the FWS was precluded from listing the species by higher priorities. At the same time the FWS found that rare and declining subspecies of Sage-Grouse found in the Mono Basin of California and eastern Washington State were warranted for protection but also precluded from listing as threatened or endangered.
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Posted in Court, ESA, Endangered Species Act, Environment, Sage grouse | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
LDS Apostle, Orson Hyde
Oct. 7, 1865 when Apostle Orson Hyde, one of the 13 leaders of the Mormon Church, speaking at General Conference in Salt Lake City to the assembled members of the church, had this to say about how the church wanted Mormons to live their lives:
“There is a good deal of ambition among our people to cultivate a great quantity of ground, the result of which is, that we cultivate our lands poorly in comparison to what we would if we were contented with a smaller area, and would confine our labors to it. We have found some difficulty with regard to water, and complaints have been made about a scarcity of water in many places, when, indeed, I suppose the Lord has apportioned the water to the amount of land He intended should be cultivated. I do not think that these things are passed over unnoticed by Him … He understands perfectly well what the elements are capable of producing, and how many of His people may be established here or there with profit and with advantage.” (more…)
Posted in Court, ESA, Environment, Grazing, Livestock | 5 Comments »
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
WWP’s challenge of 17 BLM Resource Management Plans incorporating tens of millions of acres of public lands has gotten the attention of Eureka County, Nevada. The County seeks to intervene in the lawsuit.
Eureka wants to intervene in lawsuit – Free Press
Marvel said the lawsuit “charges that the BLM failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act by not analyzing adequate alternatives that would protect sage grouse and other sage steppe wildlife species.”
“WWP claims that all the RMPs (resource management plans) are inadequate and violate the law in similar ways. The lawsuit affects about 34 million acres of BLM-managed lands,” he said.
But others react differently.
Nevada Cattlemen’s Association President Dan Gralian told Elko County Commissioners in June the Western Watersheds lawsuit is intended to drive people off public lands, and the suit affects all of rural Nevada. More than 300 grazing permits in the state would be affected if Western Watersheds wins.
Gralian called Western Watersheds a “radical environmental group.”
Tags: RMP Litigation
Posted in Court, Environment, General Conservation, Interior, Livestock, Wildlife, Wildlife Habitat | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Western Watersheds Project’s Montana Office recently won Summary Judgment from the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals remanding the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to build fencing for livestock grazing within a Wilderness Study Area on public lands in Southwest Montana.
View Bell Canyon in a larger map
The fencing would have altered the wilderness characteristics of the landscape for many reasons, but the Administrative Law Judge specifically cited BLM’s failure to consider the impact that the fencing would have on the view of the public landscape.
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Tags: western watersheds project, wilderness
Posted in Activism, Court, ESA, Environment, Grazing, Livestock, Public Lands | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
The litigation docket of Western Watersheds Project is large and varied. All legal actions are taken to bring better management to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife by ensuring that federal and state land and wildlife management agencies are complying with their legal mandates.
Some of the highlights of current and proposed litigation include WWP’s winning in March 2009 a federal court injunction on 612,000 acres of the Jarbidge Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in southern Idaho. The injunction requires that the BLM change livestock management to ensure the survival of sage grouse and other sage-steppe dependent species.
WWP recently brought two very large cases cases challenging 18 BLM Resource Management Plans in four states (Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming). These Plans were completed at the end of the Bush administration and failed to comply with two major federal statutes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). This case affects over twenty-five million acres of public land.
The second large case challenges over 100 recent BLM grazing decisions in Nevada and Idaho that failed to address impacts of livestock grazing on sage grouse
and many other sensitive species of the sage-steppe ecosystem. Both of these cases are being heard in federal district court in Idaho.
These two large cases compliment WWP’s challenge of the denial of protections of the Endangered Species Act to Greater Sage Grouse by the Bush administration. The sage grouse listing case is ensuring that a new decision about whether to protect sage grouse will comply with the law and take into account all available scientific information about the populations and habitat conditions of sage grouse across the west.
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Posted in Court, ESA, Endangered Species Act, General Conservation, Grazing, Livestock | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 29th, 2008
WWP’s Arizona Director has been busy keeping the spotlight on BLM’s mismanagement of national monuments. This article about the Sonoran Desert National Monument spells out the explicit directive to manage the monument for wildlife and conservation values above livestock grazing ~ a task BLM has been just flat ignoring/sidestepping :
Grazing Away – Tuscon Weekly
Fortunately, accountability is on the way.
Posted in Court, General Conservation, Over-grazing, Public Lands | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 15, 2008
CONTACT:
Brent Fenty 541-330-2638
Jon Marvel 208-788-2290
Ninth Circuit orders Bureau of Land Management to evaluate wilderness values on public lands
PORTLAND, ORE. — The Bureau of Land Management must rewrite its land use plan for southeast Oregon due to a landmark decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. The BLM wrongly refused to evaluate impacts to wilderness values on the public lands in the challenged plan, according to the decision, which overturned a district court decision upholding the plan.
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Posted in ATVs, Court, Environment, General Conservation, Grazing, Interior, Livestock, Ninth Circuit, Press Release, Public Lands, wilderness | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
A federal judge has enjoined plans to graze and produce cattle feed on lands that recieve money from a federal program used to set aside those lands for their value to conservation.
Judge halts USDA’s cattle-grazing plans on Conservation Reserve Program lands -Â Lynda Mapes – Seattle Times
The injunction holds until the judge issues a decision as to whether the program must undergo proper environmental analysis of its impact to wildlife and habitat.
Posted in Court, Feed/Forage, General Conservation, Grazing, Livestock, Wildlife Habitat | 3 Comments »
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
WESTERN WATERSHEDS PROJECT
NEWS RELEASE
May 16, 2008
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Contacts:Â
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Dr. Steven G. Herman: Â 360-894-0751; cell 360-451-0089
Bob Tuck: 509-945-7250
Kristin Ruether: 208-342-7024 ext 208
Jon Marvel: 208-788-2290
Litigation Filed in Thurston County Superior Court To Challenge Livestock Grazing of Quilomene/Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area
Western Watersheds Project (WWP), a west-wide conservation organization, has expanded a lawsuit in Washington State’s Thurston County Superior Court to challenge a permit issued by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) permitting commercial livestock grazing of the western portion of the Quilomene/Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area, on an area known as Skookumchuck.Â
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The suit challenges the WDFW’s failure to conduct any environmental analysis of the permit as required by the State Environmental Protection Act. The permit was signed on April 22, 2008, without any public comment period, environmental analysis, or disclosure to the public of the environmental effects of allowing grazing on the Wildlife Area.
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Posted in Court, Endangered Species, General Conservation, Press Release, Public Lands, Sage grouse, Wildlife Habitat | No Comments »
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Earlier we noted how the Fish and Wildlife Service wanted out of a sage grouse agreement the government made with Western Watersheds Project and Advocates for the West to take another look at listing imperiled sage grouse, this time considering the best available science.
The lawyers struck a deal extending a decision about listing past the anticipated release of a comprehensive report from the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies about the status of sage grouse such that the results would be considered in the government’s new decision and the public would be afforded time to comment.
The government claims that FWS officials didn’t approve the deal even as Department of Justice lawyers signed off.
Today, a federal judge struck down the government’s attempt to exclude the report in its court-ordered reconsideration of listing for sage grouse:
BOISE, Idaho — A federal judge is holding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to a deal reached with environmentalists that sets a timeline and other conditions on whether to grant threatened or endangered status to the sage grouse.
Posted in Court, ESA, Endangered Species Act, Interior, Sage grouse, politicized science | No Comments »
