by Philip A. Janquart
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (CN) – Wyoming cattlemen sued the United States on Wednesday, claiming its plans to protect 16 million acres of sage grouse habitat ignore adverse affects on grazing.
The Wyoming Stock Growers Association sued the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, both of them branches of the Department of Agriculture, for issuing final agency decisions that designate thousands of acres as protected sage grouse habitat.
“The BLM and Forest Service worked together to go ahead and amend respective land use plans to address the greater sage grouse, and we are challenging those amendments and the management standards and guidelines, and how that affects the livestock industry, specifically the grazing on Forest Service land and land managed by the BLM,” plaintiff's attorney Maegan Woita, of the Mountain States Legal Foundation in Lakewood, Colo., told Courthouse News on Thursday.
The stock growers say the BLM's record of decision for the Rocky Mountain Region, the approved resource management plan amendment for Wyoming, and the Wyoming Greater Sage-Grouse Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) are “contrary to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act … and other laws.”
Wyoming Stock Growers executive vice president Jim MaGagna said the 16 million acres set aside as protected habitat are critical to the cattle industry and that prohibiting grazing there violates state and federal law.
“Our litigation is specific to the BLM/USF's plans collectively known as the '9-plan.' This collectively represents approximately 16 million acres of sage grouse habitat, nearly all of which is grazed by livestock,” MaGagna told Courthouse News Thursday night.
“While we will be raising very specific concerns once we have reviewed the agencies' administrative records, our concerns generally relate to the agencies' failure to fully accept and be guided by the provisions contained in the Wyoming governor's executive order on sage grouse.”
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Source: Courthouse News Service
