Federal judge blocks livestock grazing in Oregon’s sage grouse research areas

The Bureau of Land Management didn't explain why it made changes to certain definitions in its 2025 land use plan, a federal judge ruled.PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management must do its best to keep livestock from grazing in key sage grouse research areas in Oregon, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.In a dispute between the Oregon Natural Desert Association and the federal government over a 2025 land use plan that reduced protections for “key research natural areas,” U.S. District Judge Michael Simon determined the plan violated multiple environmental laws.The Oregon Natural Desert Association ​​first sued the BLM in 2019, accusing the agency of continuously delaying action on its 2015 sage grouse conservation plan.The plan created 15 key research natural areas intended to be kept free of livestock grazing and act as control sites for researchers to measure the impact of grazing on sagebrush communities, but the agency failed to fully close the areas. The group won a 2022 order requiring compliance.The group sued again when the agency released the 2025 plan that reduced protected acreage from about 22,000 acres to roughly 3.7000 acres. Simon, a Barack Obama appointee, barred grazing on those 22,000 acres in April 2025.Following arguments from earlier this year, Simon found the Bureau of Land Management violated a mandate of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act when it issued the new plan.Specifically, the agency is barred from managing wilderness study areas — roadless lands of 5,000 acres or more that have wilderness characteristics — in a way that impairs their suitability for preservation.Simon agreed with the conservation group that BLM had failed to adequately address the impacts of grazing on the wilderness characteristics of the wilderness study areas within the key research natural areas.“Its impairment analysis begins and ends with general statements about the effects of grazing on the ‘characteristics’ as a whole,” Simon wrote.The conservation group accused the agency of violating a second mandate of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, one that requires BLM to manage public lands in accordance with land use plans, but the court disagreed.The agency did, however, violate the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to discuss its changes to definitions for “relatively unaltered,” “key research natural areas,” and “baseline reference area” as used in the challenged 2025 plan. BLM then further violated the Act by failing to provide meaningful public comment on those changes, Simon found.The BLM also changed its position on the minimum number of acres necessary to research sage grouse without explaining its decision-making, which violated the Administrative Procedure Act.While the agency articulated good reasons for reducing the number of ungrazed acres from the 2015 plan, it did not do so for every change, Simon found.For example, the new plans don’t explain whether there is a difference between an ungrazed baseline and a grazed baseline.“This is the kind of unexplained inconsistency that renders the agency’s decision arbitrary and capricious,” Simon wrote.Finding the new plans violated federal environmental law, Simon decided not to vacate the plans but instead to order the agency to reopen the public comment period and provide a better explanation for the changes.Plus, vacating the new plans would force the agency to implement the 2015 plan and install fencing deemed unnecessary and could introduce environmental problems, Simon wrote.“This flip-flopping will itself create the potential of environmental disruption in the key [research natural areas] and impairment of the wilderness characteristics in the [wilderness study areas],” Simon wrote. “Nor does equity call for Sisyphean construction.”The conservation group requested a permanent injunction ordering BLM to implement the closures from 2015 by no later than 2027 in every pasture with a key research area, but the court ordered a narrower injunction.Instead, the agency must make its best efforts to prevent livestock from grazing in the 2015 closure areas, conduct periodic compliance checks of all key research areas that haven’t been permanently closed and follow the BLM’s administrative process for addressing unauthorized use and verify that livestock have been removed from the key research areas.Neither the conservation group nor the federal defendants immediately responded to requests for comment.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads