BLM Secret Permit Transfer

Advocates for the West filed a federal lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management challenging BLM secret grazing permit transfer to one of the largest livestock corporations in the U.S., J.R. Simplot Livestock Co (“Simplot”). In the midst of separate litigation over the BLM’s grazing permits on the Battle Creek allotment, BLM secretly transferred two of these permits on the Battle Creek allotment to Simplot – without first notifying the public or our client Western Watersheds Project. Worse yet, BLM refused to prepare any environmental review before it transferred these permits, and, instead, relied on the same environmental assessment recently held unlawful in the Great Basin Sage-grouse case (WWP v. Salazar,Case No. 08-435).