Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Nevada counties sue over sage grouse

A lawsuit alleges the federal government is skirting necessary due process in a looming sage grouse decision by not considering “warranted but precluded” as a listing category. The Nevada Association of Counties, Nevada Mineral Resources Alliance, the American Exploration & Mining Association, and F.I.M Corp. – a family-owned sheep operation in Smith – jointly filed the lawsuit on Thursday. The coalition asserts that the government violated the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution, and specifically takes issue with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s 2011 legal agreement with conservation groups to determine whether candidate species – in listing limbo – needed to be recognized as protected or not. A species under consideration for protection can be classified in one of three ways: It will be added as an endangered or threatened species, it won’t warrant a listing, or a listing is warranted but precluded because other species are in more dire straits. But the 2011 court settlement takes the third possibility off the table for many candidate species. “Under the Settlements, FWS voluntarily, and without congressional authority, eliminated one of these three statutory options that the ESA requires it consider,” the complaint states. Plaintiffs also argued that the greater sage grouse decision date, Sept. 30, 2015, doesn’t give states and local governments, as well as business entities, landowners and nonprofits, enough time to demonstrate how their efforts have improved sage grouse habitat and bird populations. “The purpose of the ESA is not to add species to the protected list but to protect species and their habitat so they never warrant listing as a threatened or endangered species,” the document continues...more

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