For Immediate Release
May 5, 2003

Denver, CO—Conservation groups filed papers in the United States District Court late Friday firing back at Gale Norton’s plan to freeze wilderness consideration on more than 200 million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

In a filing before a Federal district court judge in Utah, national and state conservation groups from eight western states charged that Norton’s Department of the Interior had violated the law, the US Constitution, and federal court decisions when it quietly agreed to forever surrender the BLM’s authority to review and protect its wilderness quality lands. The agreement came in the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the State of Utah against the federal government.

Federally designated wilderness areas are off limits to road building, logging, mining and off-road vehicle use. Congress designates such wilderness areas, usually after they are brought to its attention by the BLM or Forest Service. The Interior Department wiped out the process whereby the BLM identifies which lands deserve wilderness protections. The settlement also removed an interim form of protection in so-called Wilderness Study Areas. These are areas identified by the BLM as deserving wilderness protection and where development and road building are banned while awaiting a Congressional decision on permanent protection as designated wilderness areas. The Norton settlement removes Wilderness Study Area interim protections applied since the Reagan era. Other large undeveloped pieces of BLM land that were on their way to WSA interim protections are now open to development as a result of the settlement.

The conservationists’ legal challenge charges that Secretary Norton’s settlement of a case with the State of Utah:

• unlawfully surrenders BLM’s clear authority to inventory for and protect wilderness character lands, as set out in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976;
• violates environmental laws meant to ensure that environmental impacts to wilderness character lands are considered before such lands are degraded;
• defies a court order in a federal court case in California that required the Interior Department to manage certain areas until BLM decides whether to treat them as wilderness study areas; and
• violates the US Constitution by attempting to bind future Presidents to an unlawful interpretation of law.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the BLM would be unable to enlarge Wilderness Study Areas to include spectacular wildlands like those in Adobe Town and the Pinnacles, two pristine Red Desert areas where the BLM has already inventoried and identified unprotected lands that qualify for wilderness. These two areas were slated for consideration as Wilderness Study Areas under the Great Divide and Jack Morrow Hills Plans prior to the settlement.

"Common sense demands that we protect our most priceless desert wildlands, while drilling occurs on less sensitive landscapes," said Erik Molvar of Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. "It would be a crime to prevent the BLM from protecting these tracts of wild country as they redraw the management of the Red Desert."

Visit our album for a photo of Adobe Town available for publication.

Throughout Wyoming, over 800,000 acres of BLM wilderness would never be eligible for Wilderness Study Area protections because of the settlement. "If all of these lands became wilderness tomorrow, it would only add up to 12% of the Wyoming BLM lands," said Liz Howell of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. "This attack on Wyoming’s wildlands is unprecedented; even James Watt never went this far."

Nationwide, wildlands at risk include stunning red-rock canyons and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, the Roan Plateau in Colorado, desert grasslands in New Mexico, redwood forests in the Headwaters area of California, as well as pristine Sonoran desert in Arizona. From isolated basin and range country in Nevada to forestlands of Oregon to Sequoia forests in California, many of America’s last wild jewels are suddenly opened to business as a result of the government’s settlement with Utah. None of these lands will be considered for wilderness protection if the Norton settlement agreement stands.

"Why would BLM end the process for identifying and protecting irreplaceable wilderness jewels deserving of protection? One reason --so they can be opened to exploitation by oil companies and other commercial interests," explained Heidi McIntosh of Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell, who is representing the coalition, said, "The federal government is rushing to develop some of America’s last wild lands. Truly wild lands, that support native plants and animals aren’t being made anymore. It’s clear to most Americans that it’s best to first identify and protect the pristine."

The conservation groups challenging the illegal settlement include: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The Wilderness Society, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Colorado Environmental Coalition, Arizona Wilderness Coalition, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Natural Resources Defense Council, California Wilderness Coalition, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, and Idaho Conservation League.

In 1996, Secretary of Interior Babbitt instructed the BLM to review wilderness lands in Utah that were erroneously overlooked in a prior wilderness review that concluded in 1991. The State obtained an injunction from Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court in Utah. In 1998, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Judge Bensen's injunction, and ordered him to dismiss seven of the eight remaining claims, decimating the case. The State of Utah amended the suit to attack BLM’s ability to protect its wilderness quality lands. The amended suit also challenged BLM’s Wilderness Inventory Handbook, which is a set of guidelines for BLM managers to assess wilderness protections for federal lands affected by proposed resource development.

The Wilderness Handbook came under fire recently when Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyoming) and other Republican congressional representatives sent a letter to Sec. Norton demanding that she rescind the Handbook.

After amending their lawsuit on March 28th, on April 11, the Department of the Interior announced it had reached a settlement of a suit by state and counties in Utah against the Interior Department over the Babbitt BLM reinventory that identified three million more acres in the state that qualified for wilderness protection than previously identified. The Utah federal judge signed the settlement the next business day, without ruling on the conservationists request to participate in the suit so their objections to its legal basis could be heard.

Although the courts largely rejected the state’s case in 1998, the Bush administration used the suit to broker a backdoor settlement by revoking BLM's authority to conduct wilderness inventories or to establish new Wilderness Study Areas in any state.

The settlement also disallows the use of a 1999 comprehensive statewide BLM reinventory of Utah's public lands.