Federal government must reconsider predator management plan in Nevada

(CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take another look at its predator management plans in Nevada and decide if a new analysis is warranted.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du issued the order following an April Ninth Circuit ruling in a lawsuit by environmental groups WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project.

The appeals court vacated an environmental assessment that allowed federal agencies to control predators, such as mountain lions and coyotes, through lethal means, thereby blocking the agencies’ population management activities on approximately 6 million acres of protected Nevada wilderness, which constitutes nearly 10% of the state.

However, those agencies could continue their predator management plans in other parts of the state.

Lethal methods include aerial and ground shooting, snaring, trapping and chemical use. Between 2012 and 2016, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, killed over 21,500 coyotes in Nevada, mostly by air.

The three-judge appeals panel in its decision also sent the issue back to Wildlife Services. That agency must now reconsider whether it should make a new environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.

“The [environmental assessment] is deficient in several ways that the agency will have the opportunity to reconsider on remand,” the appeals panel wrote. “First, [its] description of the federal lands where the proposed [predator damage management] actions will occur is internally inconsistent.”

The appeals court found unclear land designations shifted the predator management program’s size by 1.5 million acres, leaving the public unsure of its boundaries and restricting its ability to provide comment.

The court also ruled that Wildlife Services failed to assess local impacts of a predator damage management plan, including public health risks, effects on sensitive areas and the science behind lethal control methods.

The legal dispute between the environmental groups and the federal government has stretched over a decade.

The conservation group first filed suit in 2012 against Wildlife Services, claiming that the agency relied on a 1994 environmental impact statement that violated the National Environmental Policy Act. They settled the suit in 2016.

As part of the settlement, Wildlife Services agreed to stop all predator damage management actions in the designated Nevada areas until it could complete a new analysis.

The agreement was followed in 2019 by a draft environmental assessment. The document detailed the impacts of a new predator damage management program on the wilderness areas.

WildEarth Guardians argued at the time that the new plan’s impacts weren’t evenly distributed across Nevada. Additionally, it stated that the agency needed to prepare an environmental impact statement regarding the effects on the wilderness areas.

Wildlife Services issued a finding of no significant impact in 2020, detailing why an environmental impact statement was not required.

WildEarth Guardians sued the following year, arguing that the federal agencies violated the National Environmental Protection Act by failing to perform a rigorous environmental impact statement. A lower court rejected the argument, leading the conservation group to appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

The three-judge appeals panel heard the argument in October. Its April ruling is the reason for Tuesday’s lower court order.

Representing the conservation groups, attorney Jennifer Schwartz praised the move.

“We believe we obtained excellent results on behalf of our clients by vacating the agency’s flawed environmental analysis and by prohibiting the lethal control of native wildlife across over 6.2 million acres of Nevada’s most protected, wild places,” she said in a statement to Courthouse News.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it wouldn’t comment on pending litigation and referred further comment to the U.S. Department of Justice. The justice department declined to comment.