Chronology of Success 2015

‘Winning for the West’

January 2015

  • Complying with the district court order in our litigation for Winter Wildlands Alliance, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a final rule requiring winter travel planning on all National Forests in order to protect resources and reduce conflicts caused by snowmobiles in backcountry settings.

February 2015

  • In our second major win to protect the Sonoran National Monument in Arizona, U.S. District Court holds that BLM was “arbitrary and capricious” in selectively using partial data to justify authorizing livestock grazing in the sensitive desert ecology of Monument lands.

March 2015

  • Senior Attorney Laurie Rule wins ruling from Idaho District Court reversing Fish and Wildlife Service’s arbitrary and capricious decision to reduce designated critical habitat for endangered Selkirk mountain caribou by hundreds of thousands of acres in northern Idaho.
  • Former Idaho Governors Cecil Andrus (Dem) and Phil Batt (Rep) engage us to challenge Dept. of Energy plans to ship commercial spent nuclear fuel to Idaho, contrary to 1995 Settlement Agreement they negotiated to prohibit such shipments.

June 2015

  • Federal Judge Wallace Tashimi grants summary judgment for us in latest round of our litigation challenging corporate livestock grazing in critical habitat of Chiricahua leopard frog in the Cocino National Forest of central Arizona.

July 2015

  • In case brought for Idaho Rivers United to protect the Selway Wild and Scenic River, U.S. District Court grants our request for preliminary injunction to prohibit the State of Idaho from using Forest Service roads for an irresponsible road building and logging project that threaten massive sedimentation into Selway River.
  • Laird J. Lucas resumes position as Executive Director of Advocates for the West, and is again named a “Mountain States Super Lawyer” for environmental litigation.

October 2015

  • Our federal court litigation challenging improper mining exploration in wetlands and endangered fish habitat along East Boulder Creek (near North Fork Salmon River) was dismissed favorably after the Salmon-Challis National Forest agreed not to approve such mining in the future without environmental review and public involvement, and to require restoration of the exploration site.