Top court to hear Utah wilds dispute

Wilderness advocates were handed a bitter pill to swallow Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear an appeal by the Bush administration in a Utah wilderness dispute.

Environmentalists had earlier won their case in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has an obligation to protect wilderness study areas and that it could face lawsuits if it didn't.

The Bush administration appealed, and the high court has now agreed to hear arguments about whether federal agencies like the BLM can be subjected to citizen lawsuits for not protecting public lands.

"It's frustrating," said Stephen Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "It's a one-two punch for the Bush administration. The first punch came in April when the administration declared no more wilderness study areas and the second punch is that they will not manage the wilderness we have."

The issue has far-reaching ramifications, not just for Utah wilderness but for how all federal agencies are managed and what role the public has in using the courts for oversight.

"The nation's wilderness-quality lands have never been more at risk," Bloch added.

In 1999, SUWA and other conservation groups sued the BLM for not protecting Utah's backcountry, specifically areas particularly hard-hit by ORVs.

The state of Utah, several counties and the ORV group Utah Shared Access Alliance (USA-ALL) were allowed to intervene as defendants.

Repeated attempts to contact USA-ALL for comment were unsuccessful.

SUWA lost the first round in its legal battle in 2000 when U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball dismissed the group's claims, ruling that as long as the BLM is taking some action, it couldn't order federal land managers to ban ORVs from popular places in wilderness study areas.

Last year, however, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

But the Bush administration argues that the agency's daily actions can't be challenged in court. Solicitor General Theodore Olson said, in court documents, that groups could challenge final agency actions, but not inactions.

"Plaintiffs cannot seek wholesale improvement of (an agency's) program by court decree, rather than in the offices of the department or the halls of Congress, where programmatic improvements are normally made," Olson told justices in a filing asking the Supreme Court to take another look at the case.

On Monday, the Supreme Court granted the request and agreed to hear oral arguments as early as its Spring 2004 term.

This comes at the heels of recent deals between Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton. In January, the Department of Interior agreed to set up a process for the state to claim ownership over rural roads that crisscross public lands. In April, Interior agreed to back off on interim wilderness protections covering 6 million acres of land in Utah.

"Action after action, the Bush administration is attempting to wipe out America's wilderness," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness.

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E-MAIL: donna@desnews.com