A coalition of environmental groups has petitioned a federal court to join the Bureau of Land Management in its defense against a lawsuit by the states of Utah and Wyoming challenging BLM’s public lands rule.
The motion to intervene from the three groups — the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Wilderness Society and Conservation Lands Foundation — includes a memorandum of support for the rule, implemented last month, that elevates conservation on par with other uses of BLM lands, such as energy development and livestock grazing.
The groups state in the motion filed Thursday that they should be allowed to intervene because they “have a significant interest in the BLM-managed public lands that will benefit from the Rule’s conservation framework.”
They added, “For decades, they have promoted and defended conservation of BLM-managed public lands by engaging at every level of BLM’s decision-making, from rulemakings, to land management planning, to site-specific permitting; all told, the sweep of their advocacy is comprehensive.”
