FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 29, 2004
1:55 PM
CONTACT: Earthjustice
John McManus 510-550-6707
Jim Angell 720-272-1179
Steve Bloch 801-971-4198
Paul Smith 202-639-6060
Future of Wilderness Weighed Before Supreme Court: Bush Admin Seeks
Immunity from Public Challenge to Land Management Decisions
WASHINGTON - March 29 - Attorneys general from 14 states, every living
former head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and its
General Counsel, a coalition of 38 law professors, a veterans' advocacy
group, and numerous conservation groups asked the nation's highest court
today to retain a central check and balance that protects America's
environment. The groups asked the court to reject a Bush administration
effort to usurp the right of average American's to bring environmental
enforcement cases to protect America's natural resources.
The case before the court centers on undeveloped public lands in the
west. The federal government is required by law to maintain the wild
character of these lands. When off-road vehicle drivers damaged the
lands with their vehicles, the federal government refused to take
protective action until citizen groups initiated legal enforcement
action. Although the government admitted that it was breaking the law by
not adequately protecting these pristine and wild areas, it has offered
a radical new legal theory in the Supreme Court under which the public
would be helpless to enforce this and other legal duties.
Photos of the damage, submitted as evidence to the court, are available
online: http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=805
(High-resolution, print-quality images available for download).
"The Bush administration is trying to convince the court that they
should be granted permission to operate above the law," said
Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell. "They are calling for a significant
power shift away from the people in this country and our tradition of
checks and balances."
Potential wilderness areas in Utah and other western states are
currently suffering unchecked and long-term damage from free- wheeling
off-road vehicles. The federal Bureau of Land Management has failed to
protect these areas, while also failing to implement legal requirements
to designate and properly mark areas where off-road vehicles are free to
recreate.
Angell explained, "We are facing an administration that has shown no
interest whatsoever in protecting America's wildlands. Instead, it has
worked nonstop to eliminate or weaken the environmental safeguards that
protect these lands from exploitation by off-road vehicle users and the
degradation caused by the administration's friends in the oil and gas
industry."
The conservation groups defending America's wilderness before the
Supreme Court include the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The
Wilderness Society, the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Great Old
Broads for Wilderness, Wildlands CPR, the Utah Council of Trout
Unlimited, American Lands Alliance, and Redrock Forests. The groups are
represented by attorneys from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance,
Earthjustice, and the Washington, DC, office of the law firm Jenner &
Block.
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