Category Archives: Center for Biological Diversity

Judge temporarily halts grazing on federal public land near Burns

A federal judge Tuesday granted a temporary restraining order that bars Hammonds Ranches Inc. from livestock grazing on federal public land near Burns during June.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon ruled from the bench, noting a written order would follow. He also has scheduled another hearing for June 28 to consider a motion by three environmental advocacy groups for a preliminary injunction barring further grazing at the sites.

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Environmental groups sue BLM to block renewal of grazing permit for Hammond Ranches

Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Wildearth Guardians filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Pendleton against the interior secretary, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the district manager of the land bureau’s Burns District office.The three groups argue that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s renewal of the grazing permit after the Hammonds were issued pardons violated federal administrative regulations because it failed to consider the Hammonds’ unsatisfactory record.

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PUBLIC LANDS: Cliven Bundy to appeal lawsuit judge calls ‘delusional’ 

In an eight-page ruling (See Below), Nevada state Judge Jim Crockett rejected Bundy’s assertion that only individual states — rather than the U.S. government — can own public lands.”It is simply delusional to maintain that all public land within the boundaries of Nevada belongs to the State of Nevada,” Crockett wrote in the decision dated April 1 and published yesterday.

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Judge tosses Cliven Bundy’s claim that state owns all public lands | Las Vegas Review-Journal

District Judge Jim Crockett’s decision was handed down in response to court papers filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group, which had intervened in the case. The judge’s decision followed previous court decisions against Bundy, who has claimed the federal government should not own land.“It is painfully obvious that the claims asserted by Bundy in the instant matter rest upon a fundamentally flawed notion advanced by Bundy since 1998 regarding ownership of federal public lands,” Crockett wrote in an eight-page decision.

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Left-wing Hate Group SPLC Faces Charges of Racketeering and Abetting Theft

The smear merchants of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) may have set out to destroy the wrong lawyer. PJ Media is reporting that last month, Glen Keith Allen, a Baltimore attorney, filed suit against the SPLC, alleging the left-wing hate group paid for stolen documents, violated confidentiality agreements, and caused him to be fired by the City of Baltimore over Allen’s former association with the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group.

Allen has admitted to his past support for the NA and now claims he deeply regrets that association.

Allen’s lawsuit basically accuses the SPLC of punishing “thought crime” through intimidation and character assassination. According to the complaint, the SPLC has chosen to “draw lines of political or cultural orthodoxy, develop massive surveillance networks and extensive dossiers and severely punish perceived transgressors who cross those lines, seem to cross them, or even seem to think about crossing them.

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Nevada Judge Lets Center for Biological Diversity Challenge Bundy Lawsuit Seeking to Seize Public Land

LAS VEGAS— A Nevada state court judge today granted the Center for Biological Diversity’s motion to challenge a lawsuit filed by rancher Cliven Bundy, who wants to seize more than 58 million acres of publicly owned federal lands, including national parks and monuments. Having granted the Center “intervenor” status in the case, the court can soon consider the Center’s motion to dismiss Bundy’s case.

“Cliven Bundy’s futile, rambling case is based on discredited legal theories. It’s a waste of the court’s time and taxpayer money,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center. “Bundy already owes more than a million dollars in grazing fees after flouting the law for decades and trashing critical wildlife habitat. I’m pleased the court has allowed us to intervene in this case. Hopefully the next step will be to dismiss it.”

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Center for Biological Diversity seeks to dismiss Cliven Bundy suit over federal land

The Center for Biological Diversity is asking a judge in Nevada to dismiss Cliven Bundy’s latest lawsuit seeking state control of federal land, arguing his claims lack merit and have been rejected numerous times already.

The center on Thursday filed a request to dismiss Bundy’s lawsuit and a motion to intervene in the case in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas. The center is a nonprofit environmental organization that cites protecting endangered species and their habitats as its mission.

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Interior secretary recommends shrinking Gold Butte

Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke on Tuesday recommended shrinking the boundaries of Gold Butte National Monument in a move that distressed conservationists, who have fought for years to protect the land near Mesquite. Zinke’s report came one day after the president slashed the size of two national monuments in Utah, a move that has already sparked a lawsuit.
Compared to the wholesale changes the president approved in Utah, any adjustments to Gold Butte are expected to be minor. But Zinke’s recommendations, although similar to a leaked draft in September, carry a symbolic weight for the area. They signal a major reversal of public lands policy that comes almost exactly one year after President Obama designated the nearly 300,000 acres that start about 10 miles from the site of the 2014 Bundy standoff.

“We will fight it in court,” Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director at the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in an email. “And we will win.”

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Lawsuit challenges BLM’s oil leases, including Nye County

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit this week challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s June sale of oil and gas leases in parts of Nevada, including Nye County.

On June 14, the BLM offered nearly 200,000 acres of public lands in Nevada’s Battle Mountain district for fossil fuel development, including fracking. Among the affected areas are Big Smoky and Railroad valleys in Nye County, Diamond Valley in Eureka County and the Diamond, Fish Creek and Sulphur Creek mountain ranges.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the federal court district of Nevada in Reno, alleges the BLM failed to consider the potential consequences of oil drilling in the area, from contamination of critical desert water sources to increased seismic activity and emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases.

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