Conservation Groups Move to Intervene in Lawsuit Over Wyoming Sage Grouse Habitat Plan
In Cheyenne, Laramie County, Wyoming, Western Watersheds Project and the Center for Biological Diversity announced on October 19 that they have filed motions to intervene in, and dismiss, an oil industry lawsuit, seeking to defend habitat protections for the greater sage grouse in Wyoming.
The plaintiffs in the case — the Western Energy Alliance and the state of Wyoming — ask a court to affirm the Trump administration's latest greater sage grouse management plan for Wyoming, with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as defendant. The conservation groups say the plaintiffs do not allege the BLM broke the law and instead seek court confirmation that the Bureau complied with the law, which they argue may serve as cover for a settlement shielding the new plan from lawsuits seeking to overturn it. Andrew Missel, an attorney with Advocates for the West, which represents the groups, said a party cannot sue its friend to get a judge to say how great the friend is.
The groups said recent plan amendments approved by the Trump administration weaken or remove habitat protections that formerly imposed limits on the density of industrial development, amounts of grass removal by livestock, and where oil and gas wells, roads and powerlines could be sited in relation to sensitive sage grouse breeding and nesting habitats. They said sage grouse, a sensitive barometer of land health, have continued to decline because of excessive livestock grazing and encroachment of oil and gas fields into their most sensitive habitats. Separate conservation challenges to the amendments are pending in federal court in Montana.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：大艾草松鸡（资料图）。照片：Wikimedia Commons（公共领域）。A greater sage-grouse (file photo). Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
