Several NW grazing cases decided in federal court

Chief U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill has found that federal agencies did not violate the Endangered Species Act and jeopardize threatened bull trout by approving grazing in Idaho’s Little Lost River basin. In a separate decision, Winmill agreed with an environmental group, the Western Watersheds Project, that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management improperly renewed grazing permits overseen by its office in Burley, Idaho. Although he found the BLM violated federal environmental law in the latter case, the judge did not order grazing to cease on the allotments while the agency revises its plans. In Oregon, an environmental group failed to convince another federal judge to stop a fencing project on a grazing allotment in the southern part of the state. In the Little Lost River basin lawsuit, Western Watersheds Project claimed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service insufficiently analyzed the impact of grazing and water withdrawals for livestock on bull trout. The group also claimed the agency approved inadequate mitigation measures for grazing on the two allotments, which total more than 100,000 acres of BLM and U.S. Forest Service land in Idaho. Winmill dismissed all these arguments, noting that conditions on the allotments have improved dramatically over the past decade. “Certainly there are mitigation measures that have failed,” he said. “But the record shows that the Forest Service and BLM are engaged in a serious and consistent effort to reduce grazing’s impact and recover the bull trout.” The judge was less generous in describing the BLM Burley field office’s management of four allotments that cover more than 75,000 acres in Idaho. In that case, Winmill agreed with the environmental group’s allegations that BLM had violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to study the environmental consequences of their decisions. The ruling found that BLM did not consider alternatives that would have reduced grazing levels or restricted the practice...more