In another precedent setting decision, the Idaho federal court ruled that BLM violated its grazing regulations by authorizing livestock grazing on the 70,000-acre Nickel Creek allotment in the Owyhee Plateau of southwestern Idaho without imposing mandatory terms to protect streams and fish and wildlife habitat. This ruling followed a 4-week trial in which an Administrative Law Judge found that BLM failed to follow basic scientific principles in its grazing management on the Nickel Creek allotment, despite extensive degradation caused by too many cows on the allotment.
Nickel Creek allotment
Current Status:
Pending
Case Title and Number:
WWP v. US Dept. of Interior, No. 08-cv-506 (D. Idaho)
Date Filed:
11/22/2008 The 70,000-acre Nickel Creek allotment has the most riparian habitat of any allotment in BLM's Owyhee Resource Area of southwestern Idaho. BLM's 1997 grazing permit for the Nickel Creek allotment was held unlawful in the IWP v. Hahn litigation. BLM determined in 2001 that grazing was violating all applicable rangeland health standards -- yet under pressure from the permittees, BLM issued a new 2003 permit that continued excessive livestock numbers.
We challenged the 2003 permit in an administrative hearing that lasted four weeks, at which we used BLM staff and our own experts to demonstrate that BLM violated basic range management principles in the 2003 decision; and that it would cause further ecological degradation. In a 125-page opinion issued in September 2007, Administrative Law Judge Andrew Pearlstein agreed with us. In response to appeal by the ranchers, however, the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) summarily reversed ALJ Pearlstein in December 2008, thus allowing damaging grazing to continue.
We are now in federal court challenging the IBLA's decision and 2003 permit as violating the Fundamentals of Rangeland Health and other regulations, as well as NEPA.
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