Case: Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity and Prairie Hills Audubon Society v. David Bernhardt, Joseph R. Balash, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Forest Service

February 11, 2021 – U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled strongly in our favor on this case, overturning a Trump Administration decision to strip protections from 10 million acres, mostly in Nevada and Idaho, to allow mining in critical habitat for greater sage-grouse. The court upheld our claim that the BLM failed to provide a […]

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: Notice of Appeal-Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, and American Bird Conservancy v. Bureau of Land Management

October 31, 2017 — Advocates for the West filed an administrative appeal and petition for stay of BLM’s decision to lease priority sage-grouse habitat in central Utah for oil and gas development. The auctioned parcels are home to the isolated and imperiled Sheeprocks population of greater sage-grouse. The Sheeprocks population experienced a nearly 40 percent decrease over […]

Case: Intent to Sue Over Violations of Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act

September 27, 2018 — A federal court decision preserves the listing status for Gunnison sage-grouse as a threatened species, with the critical habitat the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designated for it intact. Fewer than 3,000 of this unique sage-grouse species remain, clustered around Colorado’s Gunnison Basin. Advocates for the West represented WildEarth Guardians and […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project v. Dirk Kempthorne, Department of the Interior, and Bureau of Land Management

This large case challenges several hundred grazing permits, oil and gas leases, and other land management decisions approved by BLM during the last years of the Bush Administration, which individually and together harm the Great Basin core population of greater sage-grouse in Idaho and Nevada. BLM violated basic federal environmental laws — including the National Environmental Policy […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project v. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of the Interior

After we filed this case, BLM finally produced the requested documents in late 2013. Having received the requested information, we were able to reach a settlement with BLM in late February 2014. This case challenges BLM’s failure to fully respond to several Freedom of Information Act requests that have been pending for over two and […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project v. Amy Luenders, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Department of Interior

June 14, 2013 — In a case led by Senior Attorney Todd Tucci, Advocates for the West filed a complaint on behalf of Western Watersheds Project to protect 145,000 acres of public lands in the Ely district of Nevada, which contains key sage-grouse habitat. This is a follow-up case to our broader, ongoing lawsuit challenging 16 BLM Resource Management […]

Case: Western Watersheds Project v. Arnold L. Pike, Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of the Interior

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 […]

Case: Oregon Natural Desert Association and Audubon Society of Portland v. Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management

May 26, 2016 — Oregon Natural Desert Association won a 9th circuit court ruling that an environmental review by the BLM failed to adequately address the population of greater sage-grouse during winter at the proposed wind farm facility at Steens Mountain. ONDA filed the appeal with the 9th circuit following our 2013 settlement, after the […]

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 […]