A10
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Judge revokes Hammonds’ grazing permit, sends it back to BLM
By Mateusz Perkowski
EO Media Group
A federal judge has effec-
tively revoked a grazing per-
mit for Oregon’s Hammond
Ranches, ruling that it was
renewed contrary to regula-
tions and thus unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Michael
Simon has determined that for-
mer Interior Secretary Ryan
Zinke didn’t properly justify
his decision earlier this year to
renew the grazing permit for
ranchers Dwight and Steven
Hammond, a father and son
who’d been convicted of arson
and then received a presidential
pardon.
The U.S. Bureau of Land
Management had previously
decided against renewing the
grazing permit for Hammond
Ranches in 2014, after a jury
had found the Hammonds
guilty of setting fires to public
rangeland.
Contrary to federal reg-
ulations, Zinke didn’t con-
duct the analysis necessary to
find that their company, Ham-
mond Ranches, had a “satisfac-
tory record of performance” by
reviewing the “nature and seri-
ousness” of incidents in which
they’d failed to comply with
grazing rules, the judge said.
“It was arbitrary and capri-
cious, an abuse of discretion,
not rationally connected to the
facts before the agency, incon-
sistent with the governing stat-
utes and regulations, and an
unexplained change in agency
practice and procedure,”
Simon said.
EO Media Group was
unable to reach the Hammonds
for comment as of press time.
Although the Hammonds
were pardoned by President
Donald Trump in 2018 and
released from prison before
completing their mandatory
five-year prison sentences, that
doesn’t provide a sufficient
basis for renewing their graz-
ing permit, the judge said.
The pardons could have
been issued for multiple rea-
sons and don’t necessarily
mean the president discounted
the seriousness of their crimes
in the context of grazing reg-
ulations,
Simon said.
“ T h e
President
may
have
believed that
the shorter
Steven
sentences
Hammond
originally
imposed of
three months
for Dwight
Hammond
and one year
and one day
for Steven
Hammond
Dwight
were more
Hammond
equitable,”
the
judge
said. “Such a belief would
not show that the underlying
crimes were not serious or did
not support permit nonrenewal,
but merely that they did not
support five years of confine-
ment in a federal prison.”
Due to these “serious
errors,” Simon said it was
more appropriate to over-
turn the renewal of Hammond
Ranches’ grazing permit rather
than allow it to remain in place
while the agency reconsiders
the decision under the proper
regulatory framework.
That’s particularly true
since BLM may eventually
decide the Hammonds didn’t
have a “satisfactory record of
performance,” once the agency
properly follows regulatory
procedures, the judge said.
“Thus, it is far from certain that
a renewal permit will be issued
after remand.”
The consequences of vacat-
ing the grazing permit renewal
would not have severe conse-
quences for BLM, aside from
“the loss of a few thousand
dollars in grazing revenue,”
Simon said.
Nor would the impact be
“economically disastrous” for
Hammond Ranches, which
was “able to maintain its ranch-
ing operation and obtain pri-
vate grazing for the previous
five years when it had no fed-
eral grazing permit and, pre-
sumably, during this past year
when it was allowed only
reduced grazing.”
The judge issued his ruling
EO Media Group file photo
Cattle graze in Eastern Oregon. A federal judge has effectively revoked a grazing permit for ranchers Dwight and Steven Ham-
mond, who were convicted of arson but later pardoned by President Donald Trump. The BLM must reconsider their application.
on Dec. 20, a day after hearing
oral arguments between attor-
neys for the BLM and several
environmental groups that sued
the federal government over
the grazing permit’s renewal.
The BLM had argued
against a motion by the envi-
ronmental plaintiffs to revoke
the Hammonds’ grazing per-
mit, claiming that Zinke prop-
erly considered the pardons in
deciding to renew the ranchers’
grazing authorization.
“The secretary did have the
authority to make the decision
he did,” said Luther Hajek,
an attorney representing the
government.
For Zinke, the pardons were
relevant when examining the
ranchers’ “record of perfor-
mance” in regards to maintain-
ing rangeland health, includ-
ing the seriousness of past
non-compliance with the gov-
ernment’s standards, according
to BLM.
The grazing decision was
consistent with BLM’s graz-
ing regulations and did not
violate the Federal Land Pol-
icy and Management Act, nor
did the lack of a full environ-
mental analysis run afoul of
the National Environmental
Policy Act, according to the
government.
The BLM appropriately
used a “categorical exclusion”
to exempt the grazing permit
renewals from such an assess-
ment, since it was within Zin-
ke’s discretion to find an envi-
ronmental analysis to be
unnecessary based on the deci-
sion’s environmental signifi-
cance, the agency said.
Even if the grazing permit
renewal violated federal law,
the decision should be sent
back to the BLM for reconsid-
eration while allowing grazing
to continue at the reduced lev-
els ordered by the judge earlier
this year, according to BLM.
Not revoking the graz-
ing permits would reduce fire
risks by keeping fuels in check,
Hajek said. “If grazing is man-
aged properly, it’s healthy for
the landscape.”
Any legal errors commit-
ted in the case weren’t serious,
while the reduced grazing level
currently in place is sufficient
to allay the plaintiffs’ environ-
mental concerns about impacts
to the sage grouse and redband
trout, he said.
“It’s not necessary to vacate
the permit to maintain those
environmental
conditions,”
Hajek said.
The environmental plain-
tiffs — Western Watersheds
Project, Center for Biologi-
cal Diversity and Wildearth
Guardians — argued the graz-
ing permit renewal was unlaw-
ful because the Hammonds
don’t meet the requirement
for a “satisfactory record of
performance.”
“Livestock grazing on public
lands is a privilege, not a right,”
said David Becker, attorney for
the environmental groups. “Like
any privilege, it’s subject to revo-
cation if it’s abused.”
The presidential pardons
don’t change the ranchers’
past actions that caused their
request for grazing re-autho-
rization to be denied in 2014,
the groups argued. The BLM
should also have evaluated the
decision’s impacts on the sage
grouse, rangeland health, inva-
sive weeds and fire risks, the
plaintiffs claim.
Just because President
Trump pardoned the Ham-
monds does not indicate he
thought their crimes weren’t
serious, Becker said. “There
is nothing on the face of either
pardon about what the presi-
dent’s intent was.”
The decision to renew the
Hammonds’ grazing rights was
“egregious” because Zinke
“invented a rationale out of
thin air,” which justifies over-
turning it, Becker said.
It’s possible for the BLM to
take into account that the Ham-
monds have paid their debt to
society, but the renewal deci-
sion should follow the proper
regulations and undergo envi-
ronmental assessment, he said.
“The secretary and the
BLM completely cut the pub-
lic out of the management pro-
cess for this allotment,” Becker
said, adding that dangerous
environmental effects from
revoking the decision were
unlikely.
“There’s no showing of
highly disruptive conse-
quences,” he said.
A jury convicted the Ham-
monds of arson in 2012, with
Dwight Hammond receiving
a three-month prison sentence
for igniting a fire in 2001 that
consumed about 140 acres of
federal grassland. His son, Ste-
ven Hammond, was sentenced
to a year behind bars for that
blaze as well as another fire
that spread onto an acre of pub-
lic grassland.
However, the ranchers were
sent back to prison in 2016
after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled that they must
both complete the federal man-
datory minimum sentence of
five years for arson. A protest
against their re-imprisonment
precipitated an armed standoff
at the Malheur National Wild-
life Refuge.
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