2024 Advocates for the West Victories
11th of Dec 2024
Wyoming’s Powder River Basin
The massive Converse County Oil and Gas Project in the Powder River basin of eastern Wyoming threatens the survival of sage-grouse and birds of prey and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants. We won a significant victory halting the 5,000-well project until the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) corrects major errors in its environmental review.
Pollinators, Insects across the West
We won a significant victory against the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) over its program allowing pesticide spraying on millions of acres in 17 western states to kill native grasshoppers, harming the health of ecosystems and threatening bees, butterflies, and other insects that support a rich diversity plants and wildlife. A federal district court found that APHIS violated the law by focusing only on reactively spraying pesticides to suppress grasshoppers, and that the agency “ignores any pest management techniques other than the application of pesticides.”
Idaho’s South Fork Clearwater River
We won a major victory for rivers and streams throughout the United States when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the requirement that suction dredge miners must obtain a Clean Water Act (CWA) permit before engaging in the destructive activity. The Supreme Court rejected a petition to review our prior wins holding that gold miner Shannon Poe violated the CWA when he dumped suction dredge mining waste into Idaho’s South Fork of the Clearwater River without a required pollution permit, and requiring Poe to pay a $150,000 fine.
Red Cliffs National Conservation Area
Advocates for the West secured a major victory to protect Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in southwestern Utah and critical habitat for the threatened Mojave desert tortoise. In 2021, we sued after the first Trump administration, in its waning days, approved a plan to punch a four-lane, high-speed highway through Red Cliffs. We won a favorable settlement halting the highway, and the BLM has now indicated its intent to deny the highway right-of-way.
Sage-Grouse, Other Wildlife in Idaho
Advocates for the West won a major agreement with mining company P4 that will result in millions of dollars in payments and other significant measures to benefit the conservation of sage-grouse and other wildlife. P4—a subsidiary of Bayer AG, formerly Monsanto—agrees to contribute more than $5 million to a trust fund for sage-grouse habitat restoration and conservation, more than $2.4 million to acquire land to protect wildlife habitat connectivity, and $300,000 for sage-grouse population surveys, along with operational restrictions of its Caldwell Canyon phosphate mine in southeast Idaho to minimize the mine’s impact on sage-grouse.
Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness
We negotiated a settlement with the Forest Service requiring the agency to issue corrective management instructions that four remote wilderness airstrips along Big Creek in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness are only open for emergency and not recreational use, and to monitor future use of the airstrips. We are now awaiting a court decision to approve the settlement over the objections of the State of Idaho.
Southern Idaho’s Snake River
The Snake River in southern Idaho is threatened by ongoing agricultural pollution, including from Simplot Corporation’s Grand View feedlot—one of the largest feedlots in the country, with a capacity of up to 150,000 cattle and generating nearly 50,000 tons of manure each year. We won an initial victory in our lawsuit challenging decades of unlawful pollution discharges into the Snake River at the Grand View feedlot. A federal court judge denied Simplot’s motion to dismiss, allowing our lawsuit to proceed.
The ‘Lands Between’ in Utah
In response to settlement of our challenges to oil and gas leases issued in the “Lands Between”—the rich archeological expanse between Bears Ears and Canyon of Ancients National Monuments in southeastern Utah—BLM cancelled 25 leases totaling more than 40,296 acres because of the cultural resources they contain. We are now defending those cancellations against oil industry challenges.
Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River
We won an interim victory in our ongoing fight to stop Perpetua Resources’ proposed Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River watershed, on the edge of Idaho’s Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness and within the aboriginal homelands of the Nez Perce Tribe. The Idaho Board of Environmental Quality issued a decision invalidating Perpetua’s air pollution permit for the proposed mine, which would have allowed the mining company to emit massive amounts of arsenic-laden dust in quantities that exceed state law limits designed to protect the public.
Sage-Grouse Habitats across the West
Advocates for the West won landmark victories in February 2020 and June 2021 in our sweeping case challenging thousands of Trump-era oil and gas leases in sage-grouse habitats. Our wins held unlawful more than one-quarter of all Trump BLM oil and gas leases issued in the lower 48 states, covering over a million and a half acres of sage-grouse habitats. This January, we won a ruling denying an oil company’s request to drill new wells on one of the leases covered by our wins, and blocking BLM from approving new drilling on those leases through permit extensions.
