Utah Wilderness Appeal Rejected

A federal appeals court in Denver has dismissed, on technical grounds, an appeal filed by environmental groups challenging the legality of a settlement between Utah and the U.S. Interior Department that nullified wilderness protection for millions of acres and limited the ability of the Interior Department to protect other areas in the future.

The ruling means that the case will go back to the same federal district court judge who approved the settlement. In his court, the environmental groups can raise the challenges to the settlement that they hoped the appeals court would consider.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals made no ruling on the core issues in the appeal. Rather, in a decision issued Tuesday, the court said the appeal was premature because U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Salt Lake City, who approved the settlement, had not issued a final order in the case.

Although the ruling was procedural in nature, it is likely to have significant practical consequences. Since the settlement was approved, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management has approved oil and gas exploration on 148,000 acres of federal land in Utah and Colorado where it previously would have been prohibited.

“Unfortunately, what it means is that the BLM will continue to issue oil and gas leases on unprotected wilderness-quality lands in Utah, Colorado and elsewhere until this litigation is resolved,” said David Alberswerth, chief policy staffer on public lands issues for the Wilderness Society.

Denver attorney Constance E. Brooks, chief outside counsel for Utah, applauded the ruling, saying, “We believe that the public policies involved strongly favor upholding the settlement agreement.”

The April 2003 settlement, forged by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and then-Utah governor Mike Leavitt, represented a sea change in federal policy toward wilderness creation and had implications for every state in the West.

The new policy, embodied in the settlement, removed protection for 2.6 million acres in Utah and withheld interim safeguards traditionally applied to areas with wilderness potential until Congress decides whether to make them part of the national wilderness system.

Norton said the changes were necessary to restore balance to the way federal lands would be managed by ensuring that wilderness would not take primacy over other uses such as energy development.

Utah officials originally sued the Interior Department in 1996, when the agency was headed by Bruce Babbitt, a Clinton appointee. The state contended that the department had illegally overstepped its bounds in creating wilderness study areas. Benson ruled in Utah’s favor, but in 1998, the 10th Circuit reversed him, dismissing seven of the eight claims in the appeal.

With a new administration in power in Washington, Utah filed an amended complaint in Benson’s court in 2003. Soon after, the Interior Department, which has been aggressively promoting oil and gas development on federal lands, agreed to settle, giving Utah virtually everything it sought in the original suit.

Several environmental groups, led by Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, asserted that the settlement violated the Federal Land Policy Management Act, illegally tied the hands of future administrations, resolved legal claims beyond the scope of the suit, improperly lifted an injunction imposed by another court and was collusive.

In the latter regard, environmentalists cited a series of internal government e-mails, including one from Utah’s attorney Brooks to an Interior Department lawyer, stating: “We need a clear statement. No more wilderness.”