Post-Fire Crisis Management Decisions Justified BLM’s Grazing Permit Position, Even Though Found Ultimately Unsuccessful.
Western Watersheds Project v. Ellis, Case No. 11-35464 (9th Cir. Oct. 9, 2012) (published) involved an attorney’s fees dispute that, as the Ninth Circuit observed early on in its opinion, “added a rancorous coda to long-running grazing permit litigation in Idaho that was ably overseen by the district court.”
Plaintiff challenged the Bureau of Land Management”s (BLM’s) renewal of grazing permits in the Jarbidge Resource Area of Southern Idaho. The district court found plaintiff’s challenges to the permits had merit. The parties entered into a settlement agreement which was disrupted dramatically when a massive fire swept through the area (destroying most of the grazing land), with plaintiff then again successfully challenging post-fire BLM grazing decisions. However, the district court denied attorney’s fees to plaintiff under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A).
The fee denial was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.
The district court found that the post-fire decisions, although incorrect, were crisis decisions that were far from unjustified in nature given the circumstances. The federal appeals court refused to parse the BLM’s agency decision from its litigation strategy, as plaintiff wanted it to do. The post-fire crisis certainly justified BLM’s attempt to salvage something from an utter calamity.
Chacon, Mora County, New Mexico. United States forest ranger in the general store issuing grazing permits to Spanish-American ranchers. Jan. 1943. John Collier, photographer. Library of Congress.