Thursday, March 20, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Karen Budd-Falen, the attorney for the ranchers, said they can challenge the federal Endangered Species Act and seek compensation for having to remove their cattle and sheep from public ranges during the spring grazing moratorium.
In order to protect the Desert tortoise, a threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an opinion in August 1991 advising the Bureau of Land Management to prohibit grazing on certain land each year from March 5 to June 14.
The attorney said under the new Supreme Court decision, the ranchers can sue the Fish and Wildlife Service for violating their rights under the Endangered Species Act.
In Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling, justices said people who claim they suffered economic losses from enforcement of the act may use the same law to accuse the federal government of doing too much to protect some species.
Falen took the ranchers' case to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Salt Lake City after an Interior Department administrative law judge denied their claims in 1995, citing a lack of jurisdiction.
The ranchers had asked the Interior Department judge to halt the BLM's grazing moratorium because, Falen said, the agency did not allow the ranchers to participate in the decision-making process, and there is no scientific evidence that livestock grazing hurts tortoises.
Chuck Simmons, president of the Desert Livestock Producers Association - a group that organized Nevada, Utah and Arizona ranchers in their appeals - said the ruling "means we can recoup some of our losses if we can prove we've got them."
He said a conservative estimate would be "tens of thousands of dollars."
The association has already racked up more than $200,000 in legal costs, Simmons said.
Paul Selzer, a Palm Springs, Calif., lawyer who facilitates Clark County's Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan, said he doesn't anticipate lawsuits from developers or businesses as a result of the ruling because the parties already have agreed on a plan to protect the tortoise and other species.
"It seems to be working and people seem to be satisfied with the status quo. The environmental community and the business community are saying this is a good compromise," Selzer said.
The county approved the Desert Conservation Plan in 1995. The plan allows destruction of desert tortoise habitat in urban areas in exchange for money to conserve tortoise habitat in more remote areas.
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