Case: WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

December 15, 2025 — A Montana federal court judge issued a ruling granting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to reevaluate its determination justifying livestock grazing at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Montana’s Centennial Valley, to reconsider its grazing permit approach, and to reevaluate the environmental impacts of commercial cattle grazing at […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, and Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Sheep Experiment Station, and USDA Agricultural Research Service

April 16, 2021 — A federal judge ruled in favor of Advocates for the West and against the reauthorization and expansion of domestic sheep grazing in and around the US Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho’s Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. With this decision, the Sheep Station is not permitted to graze sheep on the summer […]

Case: WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project, and Kettle Range Conservation Group V. US Forest Service

January 22, 2021 — Advocates for the West, in partnership with Jennifer Schwartz of WildEarth Guardians and Talasi Brooks of Western Watersheds Project, jointly filed a summary judgement brief, along with declarations from wolf expert Carter Niemeyer, Kettle Range Conservation Group executive director Timothy Coleman, and biologist Jocelyn Leroux. Our filing compels the court to find that […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, and Predator Defense v. USDA Aphis, USDA Aphis Wildlife Services, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management

June 24, 2022 — Advocates for the West and our partners filed a settlement agreement in federal court that will help protect Idaho’s native carnivores through a number of measures. The settlement gives Wildlife Services until the end of 2024 to complete a new environmental review of its activities on federal lands, and mandates that […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, and Predator Defense v. USDA APHIS Wildlife Services

August 31, 2018 – Advocates for the West filed our remedies brief in this case, seeking interim injunctive relief and asking the Court to order Wildlife Services to prepare a legally adequate Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision within 3 years of the remedies order. June 22, 2018 – Advocates for the West won a […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Clearwater, WildEarth Guardians, and Predator Defense

March 11, 2020 — Advocates for the West and our allies secured a strong victory in this case in an agreement that sets strict limits on how and where a federal agency can kill wolves in Idaho, bans the use of M-44 “cyanide bombs” statewide, and prohibits the use of snares to kill wolves on […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project v. USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services

After Advocates for the West filed suit, Wildlife Services began releasing records that responded to Western Watersheds Project’s FOIA requests.  Ultimately, Western Watersheds Project agreed to dismiss the case, in return for Wildlife Services’s agreement to release 1,800 pages of records every two weeks for the next 8 months.  As the records are received, Advocates for the West and […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Clearwater, and Project Coyote v. Todd Grimm, USDA Aphis Wildlife Services, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

After Advocates for the West filed suit challenging Wildlife Services’s failure to analyze and disclose to the public the impacts of its activities in Idaho, Wildlife Services issued a draft environmental analysis that discusses some of the impacts of its activities at an Idaho-wide scale.  Advocates for the West worked with our clients to draft comments […]

Case: Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, and Project Coyote v. Kraayenbrink, Joseph J., and Bureau of Land Management

November 24, 2014 — In response to our lawsuit, BLM backed down from its decision to allow the derby to take place on the public lands managed by the agency. BLM informed us of the decision just hours before we planned to submit our brief asking the Court to stop this year’s hunt. Director of […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust and Utah Environmental Congress v. U.S. Forest Service

February 14, 2013 — U.S. Magistrate Judge Ron Bush ruled in our favor on all 4 challenged decisions allowing the U.S. Forest Service to forgo conducting environmental analysis on 43 grazing allotments in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. In 2010, Region 4 of the Forest Service renewed grazing permits for hundreds of allotments without conducting any […]