The Pahsimeroi Valley contains key habitat for three species of Endangered Species Act-listed fish: bull trout, chinook salmon, and steelhead. Yet BLM and Forest Service have not conducted monitoring and habitat improvements as required by their own ESA consultation, which is now very outdated. Their failure to meet fish habitat requirements or to consult over changed conditions violates the ESA, and perpetuates degraded habitat conditions in the Pahsimeroi.

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ESA Complaint

This action challenges Forest Service and BLM violations of the Endangered Species Act in failing to carry out consulations with US Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries over impacts of livestock grazing, irrigation diversions, and other management actions upon salmon, steelhead and bull trout in the Lemhi River watershed of central Idaho.

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Lemhi ESA Complaint

The 330,00-acre Soldier Meadows allotment lies adjacent to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada; and includes parts of the recently-designated Black Rock wilderness and other new wilderness areas. 

Soldier Meadows also has numerous springs and streams occupied by endangered fish species, including the Lahontan cutthroat trout and desert dace. 

Slickspot peppergrass is a rare desert flower found only in portions of southwestern Idaho.  Most known populations have been lost in recent decades due to impacts of livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, and other habitat degradation.  The US Fish and Wildlife Service has recognized that slickspot peppergrass thus deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, issuing a proposed listing rule in 2002.

The US Forest Service and BLM each authorize dozens of irrigation diversions on public lands in the Upper Salmon basin of Idaho, which is critical habitat for threatened salmon, steelhead and bull trout.  These public lands diversions often are crude devices, lacking fish screens; and they harm the fish by dewatering streams, obstructing fish migration, and "entraining" fish into irrigation ditches. 

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WWP v. Matejko, 9th decision

We represent a coalition of national and state groups -- including Wild Earth Guardians, National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, and New Mexico Audubon -- in this long-standing litigation over the impacts of the federal Middle Rio Grande water project on the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow.

ESA listing case, challenging US Fish and Wildlife Service's "90-day finding" rejecting WWP's listing petition for pygmy rabbit -- the word's tiniest bunny. 

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Pygmy rabbit ruling

Endangered Species Act citizen suit against Judd Whitworth and Sulphur Creek Livestock for unlawful "take" of threatened bull trout through operation of unscreened public lands diversion on Mahogany Creek, tributary to upper Pahsimeroi River.

Our experts showed that the Mahogany Creek diversion would likely "take" bull trout through entrainment into the unscreened ditch, which continued for miles as a livestock water trough; and because the crude rock-and-tarp diversion completely obstructed and dewatered the stream, thus preventing fish passage.

Endangered Species Act citizen suit against Jim Bennetts for unlawful "take" of threatened salmon, steelhead, and bull trout associated with his unscreened public lands diversions on Herd Creek and Lake Creek (East Fork Salmon River watershed), and because of livestock damage to critical habitat on his base property.

Endangered Species Act citizen suit against Verl and Tuddie Jones for unlawful "take" of threatened bull trout through operation of their unscreened diversion on Otter Creek, located on Salmon Challis National Forest public lands. 

We won an injunction prohibiting further diversions until the irrigator obtained a special use permit from US Forest Service, and it conducted ESA consultation with US Fish and Wildlife Service over installing modern diversion with fish screen.