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WYOMING GROUPS: NO BASIS FOR SAGE GROUSE RESTRICTIONSMay 25, 2012 - For Immediate Release
DENVER, CO. Two Wyoming associations today urged an Idaho federal district court to reject demands by an environmental group to restrict federal land use following the court’s 2011 ruling that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated federal law in preparing two Resource Management Plans (RMPs). The Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, following three days of hearings in April, filed a post-hearing brief advising the court that the Western Watersheds Project may not tell the BLM how to perform its job nor is the group entitled to “interim measures” while the BLM acts because it did not demonstrate the likelihood of irreparable harm or that the balance of hardships tips in its favor. The lawsuit contends that 16 RMPs, which involve tens of millions of acres of federal land in six western States, are defective as they relate to the sage-grouse. By court order, the parties briefed two test cases, the Pinedale (Wyoming) RMP and the Craters of the Moon National Monument (Idaho). “After months of legal briefings, document submittals, and expert testimony, there is no chance, let alone a likelihood of irreparable harm,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF); MSLF represents the Wyoming groups. Since 2006, the BLM has issued 16 RMPs, as to tens of millions of acres of purported greater sage-grouse habitat in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, which set out the permissible uses of the lands and outline the conditions under which each use will be allowed. Each RMP permits, under certain conditions and with various limitations, extractive uses such as oil and gas development and livestock grazing. On December 17, 2008, the Western Watersheds Project challenged the RMPs alleging that the BLM had failed to protect various sage-grouse populations. The group argues that, contrary to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the BLM failed to take a “hard look” at the direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of livestock grazing and energy development, as well as the impact on global warming, and failed to consider a reasonable range of alternatives, and, contrary to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), failed to prevent undue degradation of public lands and resources. On February 20, 2009, federal lawyers filed a motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, to sever and transfer the case, arguing, in part, that the Idaho court may not consider land management actions taken in other States. That motion was denied on May 7, 2009. On May 12, 2009, the court granted the motions of the State of Wyoming and of the Wyoming Petroleum Association and Wyoming Stock Growers Association to intervene. Mountain States Legal Foundation, founded in 1977, is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in suburban Denver, Colorado. Western Watersheds Project v. Salazar, No. 08cv516 (D.Idaho) |
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Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is a nonprofit,
public interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right
to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and economic freedom. It is an Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3) entity
incorporated in the State of Colorado. Csontributions
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