Western Watersheds Project (WWP) is bringing suit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), alleging the agency has failed to conduct environmental analyses to ensure livestock grazing is not harming public lands.
The suit challenges 35,000 grazing permits covering 155 million acres across 13 western states.
“For decades, the BLM has been ignoring the reality that permitted grazing causes significant environmental impacts that must be addressed through a transparent, public, science-based process,” claimed Josh Osher, public policy director at WWP. “Instead, the BLM has been exploiting a loophole in the law that was intended to fix the problem of unregulated grazing while the hole the agency has dug for itself just gets deeper and deeper.”
The group claims BLM has violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which mandates the secretary of the Interior determines the priority and timing for completing environmental analyses. WWP contends BLM has failed to make the required determination setting the priority and schedule for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, “allowing it to sidestep NEPA analysis for allotments that contain significant environmental resources—sometimes for more than a decade—while still authorizing grazing to continue.”
The group continued that BLM has not prioritized federal lands containing greater sage-grouse, bighorn sheep and species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), or lands set aside as national monuments or national conservation areas.
“Rather than prioritizing allotments with these significant resources, BLM is avoiding conducting NEPA review for such allotments,” WWP wrote in the lawsuit.
The organization claims that over the last 10 years, the number of permits issued without a NEPA analysis has increased, and BLM Rangeland Administration System data shows that 63% of all current BLM grazing permits were issued with no NEPA analysis.
WWP also called out specific states for most frequently deprioritizing NEPA for environmentally significant allotments, such as Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming deprioritizing sage grouse habitat; Utah and Arizona deprioritizing ESA-designated critical habitat; and Colorado, Nevada and California deprioritizing bighorn sheep habitat.
“Not only is BLM failing to prioritize allotments with these significant resources, it is also failing to prioritize allotments that are not meeting Land Health Standards,” WWP further contended in the suit. “For almost three-quarters of allotments that BLM determined were violating standards due at least in part to impacts from livestock grazing, BLM has not conducted NEPA analysis to evaluate the management changes necessary to improve resource conditions.”
WWP requests the court impose deadlines for BLM to complete the required prioritization and schedule determinations, and also complete NEPA analyses on allotments that have not had an environmental review for more than a decade.
“It is clear the agency is intentionally avoiding environmental analysis on allotments containing important natural and cultural resources and imperiled species,” said Laurie Rule of Advocates for the West, WWP’s attorneys. “The goal of this lawsuit is to force BLM to prioritize and set deadlines to complete analyses for these important allotments.” — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
