Miners Celebrate Rejection of Fed’s Demand to Break Up Land Lockup Case

March 21, 2017 – DENVER, CO.  A 122-year-old nonprofit, non-partisan mining trade association with thousands of members today celebrated the rejection by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. of the demand by federal lawyers to break up and transfer its complaint challenging a decision by federal officials, allegedly to protect the sage-grouse, to restrict unlawfully mineral exploration and development on millions of acres of federal land in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming.  The American Exploration & Mining Association (AEMA) (once Northwest Mining Association) of Spokane, Washington, represented by Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), alleges that the federal agencies involved and their officials lack authority to withdraw the land from operation of the General Mining Law of 1872 and failed to provide for adequate public participation in the process by which federal land use planning documents are amended and revised.  In September of 2015, the Obama administration announced that it would not place the sage-grouse on the Endangered Species Act list, but declared that it will withdraw highly mineralized lands from public use.  AEMA argues that federal lawyers seek either to obfuscate or delay the resolution of its claims.“We are delighted.  Fracturing our client’s case into six separate cases and making us litigate identical claims in four different judicial districts in the appellate jurisdiction of three different circuits is the antithesis of efficiency,” said William Perry Pendley, MSLF president.The greater sage-grouse is the largest grouse species in North America with a range that stretches across 165 million acres in eleven western states:  California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.  The sage-grouse are dependent on contiguous sagebrush habitat during all seasons for breeding, nesting, brood-rearing, and wintering.  Greater sage-grouse population numbers are difficult to measure because of their large-scale, camouflaged habitat.In March of 2010, the FWS published “12-Month Finding for Petitions to List the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) as Threatened or Endangered.”  The FWS found that listing of the greater sage-grouse was “warranted, but precluded” by higher listing priorities.  This finding prompted unprecedented state-led conservation efforts, especially in Wyoming.  These efforts were successful, because on September 22, 2015, citing the success of collaborative conservation efforts, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that listing of greater sage-grouse was no longer warranted and would be withdrawn from the candidate species list.In September of 2015, the BLM and Forest Service finalized their Wyoming Greater Sage-Grouse Land Use Plan Amendments and dismissed protests by the WSGA and others.  Similar plans affect California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Utah.             Mountain States Legal Foundation, created in 1977, is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system.  Its offices are in suburban Denver, Colorado.