Chronology of Success 2016

‘Winning for the West’

February 2016

  • In our largest public lands case to date, Advocates for the West filed suit in the District of Idaho challenging the BLM and Forest Service’s failure to conduct range-wide evaluation of greater sage-grouse conservation needs in the face of climate change and other threats.
  • We filed another notable new lawsuit in San Francisco federal court, teaming with litigation powerhouse Keker & Van Nest, to challenge the U.S. Park Service’s decades-long failure to assess livestock grazing impacts on the Point Reyes National Seashore.

March 2016

  • U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill issued a final ruling in our favor holding that the U.S. Forest Service violated its duties to consider and protect Wild and Scenic River values before authorizing State of Idaho to conduct road building and logging within the Selway River corridor.
  • Bringing to a close five years of advocacy by Senior Staff Attorney Laurie Rule, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the Forest Service properly closed domestic sheep grazing allotments in the Payette National Forest to protect Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep from threats of fatal diseases, rejecting sheep industry challenges.

April 2016

  • U.S. District Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt in the District of Arizona issued a second ruling holding that BLM failed to adequately evaluate the adverse impacts of livestock grazing in the Sonoran Desert National Monument, ordering BLM to conduct new land health and environmental analysis to determine whether grazing should be eliminated to protect the Monument’s fragile ecology.

May 2016

  • U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale in the District of Idaho granted a preliminary injunction halting the Forest Service’s Johnson Bar salvage logging project which threatened massive clearcuts in the Selway Wild and Scenic River corridor and sedimentation into imperiled fish habitat.
  • Following a year-long planning process, our Board of Directors adopted a new 2016-2020 Strategic Plan to guide our expansion and focus our activities on protecting public lands, wildlife and clean water across the American West.

June 2016

  • Responding to our petition on behalf of Idaho Conservation League, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers formally re-designated Idaho’s iconic Salmon River as a “navigable” river, thus providing for federal regulation of gravel mining and other threats to the river.

July 2016

  • In our second legal victory against the proposed CuMo mine in the headwaters of the Boise River, Senior U.S. District Judge Lodge ruled that the Forest Service violated NEPA and NFMA in failing to obtain and analyze the status of a rare imperiled native flower–Sacajawea’s bitterroot–which will be impacted by the proposed mining exploration activities; and remanded for further data gathering and analysis.
  • In a high profile decision, U.S. District Judge Sandra Armstrong in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied the government’s motion to dismiss our case challenging the National Park Service’s failure to adopt a comprehensive General Management Plan and supporting EIS for the Point Reyes National Seashore. Judge Armstrong agreed with us that the Park Service’s delay of more than 40 years in adopting a General Plan constitutes an “unreasonable delay” that could be enforced through our litigation.
  • Following our victory winning a preliminary injunction in May 2016, the U.S. Forest Service withdrew the Johnson Bar Salvage Project proposing extensive logging in the Wild and Scenic River corridor along Idaho’s famed Selway River.

August 2016

  • Ruling in our favor in a Freedom of Information Act case brought on behalf of former Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus, the U.S. District Court held that Dept. of Energy violated FOIA and its own “public interest” regulations in heavily redacting document relating to proposed shipment of spent nuclear fuel to Idaho National Laboratory.
  • U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled that the Forest Service was arbitrary and capricious in approving use of heavy equipment and hundreds of truck trips into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness of central Idaho to allow mining exploration at the Golden Hand site near Big Creek.

September 2016

  • U.S. Magistrate Judge Clarke in the District of Oregon ruled in our favor that the Forest Service violated its own Forest Plan requirements in continuing to authorize livestock grazing that harms sensitive fens and wetlands occupied by the Oregon spotted frog on the Antelope Allotment of the Fremont-Winema National Forest, and recommended closure of 68,000 acres to further grazing until the Forest Service has developed better protections.

October 2016

  • In a high profile case over water management in the Deschutes River basin in Oregon, we reached a successful settlement with the Bureau of Reclamation requiring Endangered Species Act consultation over its operation of the Wickiup and Crane Prairie reservoirs for impacts on imperiled Oregon spotted frogs, and established minimum flow and other interim protections.

November 2016

  • Under our 2016-2020 Strategic Plan, we hired Idaho native Kendra Kenyon, PhD., as our new Director of Strategic Partnerships to help expand our network of clients, partners and supporters, and boost our fund development and communications capabilities.