CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY V. U.S. BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, ET AL.

ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2011. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS, LITIGATION

In a major legal victory, a federal judge ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and threw a lawsuit filed by the environmental group, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) out of US District Court in Phoenix, Arizona.

CBD’s lawsuit, filed on January 27, 2009, alleged that the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) were illegally mismanaging federal lands in Arizona. The lawsuit challenged the allowance of off road vehicles, construction of roads, inadequate protection of desert tortoises, and inadequate protection of California condors. Among other things, the suit sought to force BLM to ban the use of lead ammunition for hunting in the Arizona strip. CBD contended California condors in Arizona and elsewhere were being poisoned from scavenging game that was shot by hunters using lead shot or bullets. But the record plainly showed that California condors were reintroduced to this area of Arizona based on express promises by FWS and other agencies that the “reintroduction” would not impact hunting.

The Court ruled that CBD had waived its claims concerning BLM’s failure to assess the alleged impact of lead ammunition on condors because “[i]t did not argue that BLM was required to include the potential effects of lead ammunition in [BLM’s] analysis of environmental impacts.”

NRA’s intervention on behalf of its members in the case Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, et al., has already resulted in several legal victories. A January 13, 2010 court ruling granting NRA’s motion to intervene was published in the official Federal Rules Decision Reporter. The Federal Rules Decisions Reporter is a compendium of selected United States District Court rulings that specifically interpret and apply the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure. Publication of this court ruling is important to hunters and NRA members because it sets legal precedent and confirms that there is a “significantly protectable interest” in hunting that can justify intervention by hunter’s rights groups like NRA in the increasing number of lawsuits filed by so-called environmental groups against state and federal natural resource, game and land management agencies.