USDI Administrative Law Judge James Heffernan Voids BLM Grazing Permit In Elko County Nevada

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Western Watersheds Project and the Committee For The High Desert have successfully appealed a Bureau of Land Management decision to transfer a grazing permit from Bell Brand Ranches to Bert Brackett, one of Idaho's largest livestock operators, in O'Neil Basin in northern Nevada. The O'Neil allotment is home to a small population of Lahontan cutthroat trout in the West Fork of Deer Creek. Lahontan cutthroat have been listed under the endangered species act for thirty years without significant recovery.

The BLM sought to make the transfer without an environmental analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Brackett was represented by legal counsel Alan Schroeder of Boise.

In a ruling handed down on May 9, 2003, Administrative Law Judge James Heffernan reversed and remanded the BLM's action. In his ruling, Heffernan upheld WWP and CHD's claim that the decision to extend a 10-year permit to the O'Neil Grazing Association, which Brackett hastily formed, required full NEPA analysis, and that the agency's Documentation of NEPA Adequacy, or DNA, failed to comply with NEPA and was not a document recognized under any law.

Heffernan even chided the agency for using DNAs to make its case, noting that they are not part of NEPA but an independent, "ad hoc" creation of the agency.

Heffernan also ruled that the BLM failed to consider in its decision a previous environmental impact statement that indicated the need for environmental protection of O'Neil Basin.

WWP is pursuing further remedies under this decision under the legal representation of attorney Todd Tucci of the Boise office of Advocates For The West who also argued the successful case.