FRIDAY June 04, 2004
Wildlife advocates win ruling on petitions

By Brent Israelsen
The Salt Lake Tribune

Relief may be coming up the river soon for dozens of plants and animals foundering in legal limbo.
A federal judge this week put an end to a 5-year-old policy that allowed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to delay decisions on flora and fauna proposed for endangered-species protection.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton on Wednesday ordered the agency to stop adhering to an internal policy in which certain outside petitions could be ignored.
"For years, this has been a bureaucratic black hole," said Amy Atwood, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, based in Eugene, Ore.
The black hole was the "Petition Management Guidance Policy," begun during the Clinton years. Under the policy, the FWS did not have to consider petitions from outside groups if the petitions dealt with species that the agency already had deemed "candidate species."
Under the Endangered Species Act, a "candidate" is one that is "warranted" for protection but "precluded" from official protection because the agency has higher priorities.
Environmentalists have argued that the agency has abused the "candidate" category, which currently includes 117 animals and 139 plants. Some species, such as Graham's penstemon in eastern Utah, have languished as candidates for 30 years.
In the case before Walton, environmental groups argued that the policy was helping to send the Gunnison sage grouse to extinction.
The Gunnison sage grouse, a candidate species that occurs in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, should be declared "endangered" as soon as possible, said Atwood, whose clients plan to use Walton's ruling to force FWS to take action on the imperiled bird.
On Thursday, spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the FWS, were unavailable for comment or had not yet heard about Walton's ruling, which could encourage more lawsuits and strengthen existing ones.
Last November, four conservation groups filed a lawsuit to force the FWS to give protection to Graham's penstemon, which they said is threatened by a flurry of new oil and gas exploration.
Walton's ruling also could bolster a petition the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity filed last month asking that the FWS add 225 candidate species to the endangered list.
In Utah, the FWS has identified five animals and six plants as candidate species, including the yellow-billed cuckoo, the fat-whorled pondsnail and the Aquarius Indian paintbrush.

http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06042004/utah/172575.asp

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