On March 27, the Western Watersheds Project (WWP)—together with the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, and the Prairie Hills Audubon Society—announced it had launched a lawsuit against Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, the BLM, and the Forest Service over the recently-announced finalized amendments to the 2015 sage-grouse resource use plans.
The amendments were covered in last week’s WLJ. “The Trump administration is gutting sage-grouse protections on at least 50 million acres of public lands without admitting what they are doing,” said Laird Lucas, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, inWWP’s announcement of the suit.
The WWP announcement of the suit additionally described the amendments as creating “enormous loopholes that make it easier for fracking and drilling near the imperiled bird’s prime habitat.
The lawsuit notes that these changes were sought by the oil and gas industry beginning in July 2017, and that Bernhardt and BLM have misled the public about the nature and extent of the changes.”
The suit, filed in the District Court of Idaho, requests that the judge declare that the amendments “violated NEPA, FLPMA, their implementing regulations and policies, and/or the APA;” reverse or set them aside; preliminarily enjoin their implementation; and “award plaintiffs their reasonable costs, litigation expenses, and attorney’s fees … pursuant to the Equal Access to Justice Act,” among other things.
