January, 11 2021, 11:00pm EDT
![WildEarth Guardians](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012570/origin.png)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, (303) 437-7663, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
Melissa Hornbein Western Environmental Law Center, (406) 471-3173, hornbein@westernlaw.org
Liz Trotter Earthjustice, (305) 332-5395, etrotter@earthjustice.org
Michael Saul Center for Biological Diversity, (303) 915-8309, msaul@biologicaldiversity.org
Latest Lawsuit Challenges Trump Sale of Montana Public Lands for Fracking
Suit underscores need for President-elect Biden to follow through with pledge to ban on new fossil fuel leases on public lands.
WASHINGTON
Citing the failure of the Trump administration to protect the climate and clean water, a coalition today filed suit to overturn the sale of more than 58,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Montana.
The lawsuit comes as President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the sale of public lands to the oil and gas industry.
"Today's lawsuit underscores the need for President-elect Joe Biden to make good on his promise to ban oil and gas leasing on public lands," said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. "We're holding the line on the Trump administration's denial of climate change and embrace of costly fossil fuels, but to really turn the tide, we need the next administration to make climate and clean energy a number one priority."
Filed in federal court, the suit aims to completely reverse the sale of 58,297 acres in Montana and North Dakota to oil and gas companies that occurred between July 2019 and September 2020. The coalition filing suit includes WildEarth Guardians, Montana Environmental Information Center, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance, all represented by attorneys with Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center.
The suit comes on the heels of a May 2020 federal court win that reversed the sale of nearly 150,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Montana. The judge held the Trump administration's U.S. Bureau of Land Management illegally ignored the impacts of selling public lands for fracking to the climate and to groundwater.
"In its prior ruling, the court made clear that the government's incomplete analysis violated the law," said Tom Delehanty, Earthjustice attorney. "Yet the agency has continued leasing public lands to the oil and gas industry relying on the same unlawful flaws, which is why we are going to court."
This court ruling is one of several that have overturned the Trump administration's attempts to sell public lands for fracking in the western U.S. In March 2019, a federal court rejected the Bureau of Land Management's sale of more than 300,000 acres in Wyoming and in early 2020, an Idaho judge overturned the sale of nearly one million acres in Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. In November 2020, a federal court again rejected the ale of public lands for fracking in Wyoming and in December 2020, a court also rejected the sale of 60,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Utah.
"Time after time, the Bureau continues to insist that the individual impacts of a given lease sale are so minimal as to absolve the Bureau of Land Management of the need to conduct meaningful analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act," said Melissa Hornbein, Western Environmental Law Center attorney. "As long as the agency continues to ignore the fact that the climate crisis is fundamentally cumulative in nature, we will continue to seek judicial relief to correct this misapprehension."
Hundreds of environmental, health, justice, and climate advocacy organizations have called on President-elect Biden to make good on his promise to end the sale of public lands for oil and gas extraction and to put new permitting and extraction on hold while the Bureau of Land Management addresses the climate consequences of fossil fuel development on public lands.
"It's long overdue for our public lands to become part of the solution to the climate crisis rather than a source of plunder for the oil and gas industry," said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're suing to set aside these illegal oil and gas leases because the Trump administration has completely disregarded its obligation to consider the consequences of its reckless public lands decisions on our climate and water quality."
More than 25 million acres of public lands in the U.S. have been leased to the oil and gas industry for development. In Montana, 2.1 million acres are locked up by leases to the oil and gas industry. Only half of all leased lands are actually producing oil and gas.
"In spite of the extreme urgency of the water and climate crises we face, the Bureau of Land Management has repeatedly ignored the clear evidence that significant water depletions and climate impacts will occur as a result of the lease sales we are challenging," said Kate Hudson, Western U.S. Advocacy Coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. "We are seeking to overturn these lease sales so that our communities, our Western waterways, our Native American Nations, and our planet will not be forced to pay the price."
WildEarth Guardians protects and restores the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Driven by passion, we've tackled some of the West's most difficult and pressing conservation challenges over the past three decades. We've celebrated small victories (banning leghold trapping in the state of Colorado), monumental triumphs (ending logging on more than 21 million acres in the Southwest), and everything in-between.
(206) 417-6363LATEST NEWS
Israel Bombs Yemen Saturday in Escalation with Houthis
The attack came a day after the Houthis claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Tel Aviv
Jul 20, 2024
Houthi-run media say Israeli air strikes Saturday targeted oil storage facilities in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and that there are an unspecified number of fatalities and injuries.
The attack came a day after the Houthis claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Tel Aviv that killed one person and struck just yards from a U.S. Embassy branch office.
Israel’s air strikes will not stop the Houthi's military operations in support of the Palestinian people, Houthi political bureau member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said in a post on X, warning they will instead increase until the war in Gaza ends. “The Zionist entity will pay the price for targeting civilian facilities, and we will meet escalation with escalation,” al-Bukhaiti wrote.
Military and political analyst Elijah Magnier told Al Jazeera, “Is this going to change the course of action of a non-state actor that is motivated to support the people of Gaza? Certainly not,” Magnier said. “They’ve been given a perfect reason to increase the attacks. We have not seen the end of it – far from it,” he said.
In another post on X, the Houthis’ spokesman, Mohammed Abdulsalam, called the Israeli air strikes “a brutal Israeli aggression against Yemen that aims to deepen people’s suffering and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.” Abdulsalam called the attack an Israeli “dream that will not come true. We affirm that this brutal aggression will only increase the determination of the Yemeni people and their valiant armed forces to be steadfast and to continue their support for Gaza. The Yemeni people are able to face all challenges for the sake of victory for oppressed Palestine and the people of Gaza, whose cause is the most just on earth.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate US-Bound Netanyahu for Genocide
"We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza," said the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Jul 19, 2024
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, D.C. next week, an American legal group on Friday pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into him and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459—according to Gaza officials—while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.
"We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza," says the Center for Constitutional Rights' (CCR) 23-page letter to Hope Olds, who leads the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ's Criminal Division.
"Given the frequent travel of Israeli officials and citizens to the United States resulting in their presence within U.S. jurisdiction, and recalling that HRSP is part of a coordinated, interagency effort to deny safe haven in the United States to human rights violators," the letter states, "the Department of Justice must urgently investigate and hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other serious crimes being committed on a wide-scale basis in the occupied Gaza Strip, including potentially U.S. and U.S.-dual citizens."
The Israeli prime minister is expected to be in the United States from at least next Monday to Wednesday for a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden—who is currently isolating in his Delaware home due to a Covid-19 infection—and to address a joint session of Congress, despite objections from critics of Israel's war including some lawmakers.
"Netanyahu has killed more than 14,000 precious Palestinian children with U.S. weapons and support and is starving all of Gaza—and now sycophants in the White House and Congress are rolling out the red carpet for him," Maria LaHood, CCR's deputy legal director, said in a statement. "DOJ's Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section must exercise its mandate to investigate Netanyahu and hold him to account for his heinous crimes, just as it would an international criminal from any other country."
The group's letter says that "in light of Netanyahu's imminent visit, HRSP should prioritize investigating him... There is overwhelming evidence that under Netanyahu, Israeli forces and authorities are committing genocide, war crimes, and torture against Palestinians in Gaza, acts that are proscribed under federal criminal statutes and prosecutable by HRSP."
"As the most powerful political figure in Israel, Netanyahu also leads the Security Cabinet, as well as the recently dissolved War Cabinet—the two bodies responsible for setting the strategy for and directing the military assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023," the letter stresses. "He therefore bears criminal responsibility for the serious international crimes committed against the Palestinian population over the past nine months."
Various developments this week have elevated concerns for the people of Gaza. The World Health Organization said Friday that poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples at six locations in the strip, and Amnesty International on Thursday published interviews with 27 former detainees who described being tortured by Israeli forces.
A Wednesday report from Oxfam detailed what the group called Israel's "water war crimes" in Gaza. That same day, Israeli lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing "the establishment of a Palestinian state" west of the Jordan River—widely seen as an effort to send a message to Netanyahu ahead of his trip to D.C.
International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, and Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—which on Friday issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end "as rapidly as possible."
So far, legal efforts to hold the Biden administration accountable for enabling Israel's genocidal violence against Palestinians have been unsuccessful. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit against the president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
CCR attorney Katherine Gallagher, who represented plaintiffs in the case, said that "this stunning abdication of the court's role to serve as a check on the executive even in the face of its support for genocide should set off alarm bells for all."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Death of 40 Haitians in Boat Fire Shows 'Crucial Need' for Safe, Legal Migration: UN
"Haiti's socio-economic situation is in agony," said one advocate. "The extreme violence over the past months has only brought Haitians to resort to desperate measures even more."
Jul 19, 2024
United Nations experts on Friday renewed calls to protect migrants following the death of at least 40 Haitians in a boat fire in the Atlantic Ocean.
The New York Timesreported that over 80 people were packed into the vessel when it caught fire off the coast of Cap-Haïtien en route to the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The United Nations' International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that 41 migrants were rescued by the Haitian Coast Guard, with 11 of the survivors including burn victims rushed to the nearest hospital.
"This devastating event highlights the risks faced by children, women, and men migrating through irregular routes, demonstrating the crucial need for safe and legal pathways for migration," said Grégoire Goodstein, IOM's chief of mission for Haiti. "Haiti's socio-economic situation is in agony. The extreme violence over the past months has only brought Haitians to resort to desperate measures even more."
Haiti is enduring a humanitarian and security crisis in which over 1,000 people have been killed, wounded, or abducted by members of gangs that control much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have been deployed to Haiti as part of a multinational force tasked with restoring order.
According to IOM:
The lack of economic opportunities, a collapsing health system, school closures, and the absence of prospects are pushing many to consider migration as the only way to survive... IOM research found that 84% of migrants returned had left to seek job opportunities abroad. For the vast majority of Haitians, regular migration is an extremely challenging journey to consider, let alone pursue, leaving many seeing irregular migration as their only option, a particularly life-threatening one in most instances.
IOM said the Haitian Coast Guard "has observed an increase in the number of attempts and departures by boat" in recent months.
"Coast guards from countries in the region, including the United States, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Jamaica have also reported a growing number of boats originating from Haiti being intercepted at sea," the group said. "More than 86,000 migrants have been forcibly returned to Haiti by neighboring countries this year. In March, despite a surge in violence and the closure of airports throughout the country, forced returns increased by 46%, reaching 13,000 forced returns in March alone."
Amid pressure from hundreds of advocacy groups—and alleged abuse of Haitian migrants by U.S. border authorities—the Biden administration in 2022 extended deportation protections, known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), for more than 100,000 Haitians already in the United States through this August 3. This marked a departure from the administration's earlier mass deportation of Haitian asylum-seekers.
Last month, the administration further extended TPS eligibility for over 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. for an additional 18 months, a move hailed by migrant rights advocates.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular