Environmental groups sued Wednesday to halt the Agriculture Department from killing bears, wolves, mountain lions and other predators inside designated wilderness areas to protect domestic livestock, asserting that federal agencies are overstepping the Wilderness Act.
The WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, accusing both the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service of “disregarding the plain language and core purpose of the Wilderness Act.”
That 1964 law allows Congress to designated wilderness areas, the highest level of protections for public lands. There are just over 800 of those sites nationwide, totaling 112 million acres.
But the law includes a narrow exception for continued grazing on wilderness lands, where that use predates the designation as a protected area.
