News & Updates from CWAG
March 28, 2023
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US lawsuit seeks to protect habitat of endangered corals
By The Associated Press
March 27, 2023
An environmental group filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. government of failing to protect 12 endangered coral species across the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean that have been decimated by warming waters, pollution and overfishing.
The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service more than two years after the agency proposed to protect more than 6,000 square miles worth of coral habitat.
The critical habitat designation would cover 5,900 square miles off Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida and the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. It also would cover 230 square miles around islands including Guam and American Samoa in the Pacific.
The Caribbean has five endangered species of coral, including the mountainous star coral, which is largely brown with fluorescent green streaks, and the pillar coral, which was moved from vulnerable to the endangered category in December. The other seven endangered species in the Pacific include the acropora jacquelineae. Overall, 23 coral species, which are the building blocks of reefs, are listed as endangered and six as critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
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Attorney General Neronha, DEM Director Gray file lawsuit to stop sewage discharge into Blackstone River
The complaint alleges violations of Rhode Island environmental laws stemming from multiple instances of partially treated sewage entering Blackstone River within the past 12 months. Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) Director filed a civil complaint in Providence County Superior Court against the City of Woonsocket, Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., and Synagro Woonsocket, LLC, alleging violations of Rhode Island’s environmental laws, stemming from their operation of the Woonsocket Wastewater Treatment Facility in such a way that partially treated sewage has been intermittently discharged into the Blackstone River.
As detailed in the complaint, the parties are alleged to have violated the Rhode Island Clean Water Act, the State Freshwater Wetlands Act, the state’s Environmental Rights Act, and the common law of public nuisance as a result of the discharges and failure to meet the conditions of the facility’s discharge permit.
Recent efforts, including the Clean Water Act, have improved the health of the river, and in July of 2021, the National Parks Service established the river as part of the Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park. The river is now home to more than 20 species of fish, as well as beavers, otters, snapping turtles, and a variety of birds, according to the National Parks Service.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenges the Fish and Wildlife Service’s rule extending Endangered Species Act protections to populations of lesser prairie chickens in Texas and several other Western states
Attorney General Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service (“Service”) and Department of the Interior (“Interior) to challenge the federal government’s listing of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken so that Texas can protect and manage its own natural resources.
The decision to list the Lesser Prairie-Chicken as “threatened” and “endangered” across large portions of Texas would force property owners to comply with new federal regulations wherever the chickens are present. Issues seeking clarification by the new classifications are the Endangered Species Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, each of which require the federal government to extensively consider numerous factors before changes to listings are made.
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Big Sky bison battles spell trouble for Haaland
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland wants to create more wild bison herds across the country, but the idea of letting more of the animals roam free is under attack in Montana
By Rob Hotakainen
March 22, 2023
GREENWIRE
The long-running fights in Big Sky Country could portend troubles for Haaland’s plan to build up more herds of wild bison, which once freely roamed America's prairies and played a vital part in the culture and sustenance of many tribes. There were as many as 60 million bison, or buffalo, across the United States until they were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century. Haaland, the first Native American to serve as Interior secretary, said her agency will spend $25 million on the effort, which she characterized as key to revitalizing prairie grasslands and tribal life.
But as Montana’s experience makes clear, her plan is fraught with political and logistical complications. Relocations are nothing new in the state. Since 2019, Yellowstone has shipped 294 of its disease-free bison to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. Of those, roughly 170 have then been sent from Fort Peck to 23 other tribes in 12 states.
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Obsidian Cliff: Humanity’s Tool Shed for the Last 11,500 Years
By Jim Robbins
March 20, 2023
NY Times
Spanning more than five square miles, the dark, sometimes translucent mass was formed from a rhyolitic lava flow that oozed out of the magma chamber of Yellowstone Caldera beneath the park and cooled rapidly in the bitter cold of a glacial maximum, about 180,000 years ago.
Obsidian is among the most prized tool stones in the world, and this particular deposit, nearly 100 feet thick, is exceptional because of its continual use by Indigenous people since the last ice age. Over the last 11,500 years or so, the stone has been fashioned into deadly knives, razor-sharp spear points, darts for atlatls, or spear-throwers, and arrowheads.
For modern-day researchers, the obsidian columns of Yellowstone have helped to reveal the travels and migration of people thousands of years ago. X-ray fluorescence technology has been used to identify the unique geochemical fingerprint of each separate deposit of obsidian, pinpointing the provenance of artifacts found elsewhere. Obsidian from here has been found across the continent.
A fingerprint for the most prized tool stone in paleoindian cultures transformed the field. It provides a window into the past, a flow-through both space and time over thousands and, in some places, millions of years. It opens up unknown and unimagined connections and deepens the understanding of migration, networking, and trade in populations around the world.
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President Creates Two National Monuments in the Southwest
The New York Times
By Coral Davenport
March 21, 2023
The President designated two new national monuments in the Southwest, insulating from development a half-million acres in Nevada that are revered by Native Americans and 6,600 acres in Texas that were once admired by the writer Jack Kerouac.
In southern Nevada he protected a large portion of the Spirit Mountain area, encompassing some of the most biologically diverse and culturally significant lands in the Mojave Desert. Near El Paso, Texas, he established the Castner Range National Monument on a former artillery range along rugged canyons and arroyos that rise out of the desert near the Franklin Mountains. Native tribes, environmental groups and local and state leaders have been seeking the designation for more than a decade.
The President relied on the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906 to establish the monuments. About 33,000 acres of the Spirit Mountain area were already protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964. The newly expanded monument will create a corridor that links the Mojave National Preserve and the Castle Mountains National Monument in California to the Sloan Canyon and Lake Mead national recreation areas in Nevada and Arizona.
Outside the boundaries for the proposed national monument, the federal government has identified nine million acres of public lands in Nevada for large-scale solar development and nearly 16.8 million acres of public lands for potential wind development.
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President may prevail against Navajo in SCOTUS water battle
GREENWIRE
By Pamela King, Jennifer Yachnin
March 20, 2023
The Supreme Court appeared closely divided on whether to side with the Navajo Nation in the tribe’s high-stakes fight against the Biden administration and four states to protect its right to water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.
While the court could decide the case on narrow procedural grounds, some of the more moderate conservative justices questioned whether a ruling for the Navajo would obligate the federal government to build a vast network of pipelines and pumps to deliver water to the tribe or upset the delicate balance struck by the 40 million people who rely on the massive waterway that travels among seven states and Mexico.
At issue in the consolidated Supreme Court cases, Interior v. Navajo Nation and Arizona v. Navajo Nation, is an 1868 treaty under which the federal government — after forcing the Navajo to abandon their nomadic life and restricting them to a reservation — promised that the tribe would have the land and water necessary to establish a permanent home.
In the 1908 Supreme Court case Winters v. United States, the justices said that Native Americans are presumed to hold water rights if that access is necessary to ensure full use of reservation lands. A lower court in 2021 applied Winters to find that the Interior Department had a legal obligation to assess and address the Navajo Nation’s water needs. In that case, the court declared Arizona had a right to 2.8 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River and rejected California's claim that it had a right to those same waters.
The lawsuit also formalized the division of waters in the Lower Colorado River Basin — allocating California 4.4 million acre-feet of water and Nevada 300,000 acre-feet of water, in addition to Arizona’s flows — and designated the secretary of the Interior as the region’s water master. But the Navajo Nation was left out of that lawsuit, spurring the long battle over the tribe’s rights to water from the river. The water included in the AWSA could provide about 19,000 families up to 300 gallons of water per day for one year.
The court is expected to issue its ruling by early summer.
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All summaries are posted in CWAG's google docs account, accessible through the link below. Should you have any issues with the links, contact Patricia Salazar at psalazar@agalliance.org with any questions.
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Hoopa Valley Tribe v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2023 WL 2617322 (E.D. Cal., March 23, 2023). While changes to river flow regime may harm Tribe’s fishing interests, the Tribe, in light of the likely benefits of the changes, failed to meet its burden to justify the “extraordinary remedy” of an injunction against the changes.
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Pueblo of Jemez v. U.S., ___ F.4th ___, 2023 WL 2591515 (10th Cir., March 22, 2023). Pueblo’s aboriginal title to lands, once established by exclusive occupation prior to 1650, was not extinguished or abandoned by later shared use of the same area by the Pueblo and other Indian tribes.
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Roeman v. U.S., 2023 WL 2599015 (D. S.D., March 22, 2023). U.S. not entitled to summary judgment for injury claims arising from a high-speed pursuit by a tribal officer outside reservation boundaries under a mutual-assistance agreement with the local sheriff.
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Halverson v. Haaland, 2023 WL 2561219 (D. Mont., March 17, 2023). Federal district court had jurisdiction under the Mandamus Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1131, to hear tribal member’s claim that the BIA’s partitioning of an allotment breached its trust responsibilities to the plaintiff.
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Conference of Western Attorneys General
5050 Laguna Blvd | Suite 112-323 | Elk Grove, California 95758
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