Two Utah counties lose again in monument grazing fight

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Two southern Utah counties have lost another round in their fight to reverse the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's decision to allow conservation groups to buy grazing allotments on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The Denver-based 10th U.S. District Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a federal administrative law judge's 2006 ruling that the BLM had acted properly when it issued grazing permits to the Grand Canyon Trust and Canyonlands Grazing Corp. after the groups cut deals with ranchers to acquire their allotments and cattle. The appeals court also affirmed an administrative law judge's decision to deny grazing permits to other individuals and upheld a federal district court's ruling that the counties didn't have standing to join with those individuals in their case. In 2006, Kane and Garfield counties lost a federal lawsuit that claimed economic harm from the BLM's sale of the permits to the Grand Canyon Trust. In that ruling, the federal judge also found the counties lacked standing to continue pressing their case against the agency.