You are here

National Park Service Retirees Ask To Intervene In Big Cypress ORV Case

Share
ORV trail at Big Cypress National Preserve/NPS

The Coalition to Protect America's National Parks is seeking to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the National Park Service's off-road vehicle plan for the Addition Lands at Big Cypress/NPS

A federal district judge erred when he allowed the National Park Service to place recreation over preservation in its management plan for the Addition Lands at Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, according to a coalition of retired National Park Service employees.

While the judge upheld the plan, which provides for more than 100 miles of off-road vehicle trails in habitat of the Florida panther, an endangered species, by relying on the concept of multiple use management, the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks (formerly the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees) argues in its petition to join the case that "'(M)ultiple use' laws provide agencies with discretion to favor resource use over conservation; the NPS Organic Act requires the opposite."

"Accordingly," the Coalition's petition states, "the district court’s erroneous interpretation will harm the wilderness and natural resource values of the Preserve by condoning excessive ORV use. The district court’s decision also invites degradation of other units of the National Park System that have enabling legislation that allows, but does not mandate, motorized recreation and consumptive uses such as hunting, trapping, commercial fishing, and similar activities."

The Addition Lands had been closed to both ORV use and ORV-assisted hunting ever since they came to the preserve in 1996 while officials worked on developing a management plan for the area. Of the thousands of species of flora and fauna found in the Addition Lands, nearly 100 plants are listed by the State of Florida as endangered or threatened, while 29 animal species have federally protected status.

When then-Superintendent Pedro Ramos released the final version of that plan in November 2010, it called for up to 130 miles of ORV trails, and as many as 650 ORV permits annually. Along the way to developing that plan, his critics allege that the superintendent and his staff went around Park Service Director Jon Jarvis' wishes and denied wilderness eligibility for 40,000 acres in the Addition section.

The National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club, the South Florida Wildlands Association, and others sued over the plan, saying it wrongly placed recreation over preservation in violation of the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916.  The filing argued that widespread motorized traffic would "degrade the unique natural resources" of the Addition Lands, "create conflict with non-motorized users, and fragment one of the last major wilderness areas in the eastern United States."

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Steele upheld the National Park Service's decision, saying Big Cypress officials both correctly analyzed the Addition Lands for wilderness eligibility and were within the law and not motivated by politics when they decided to remove 40,000 acres from wilderness consideration. "The Wilderness Eligibility Assessment has been made, and there is no suggestion that anything is in the works to change it," Judge Steele wrote in his 73-page opinion. "Judicial action will not inappropriately interfere with further administrative action regarding the Wilderness Eligibility Assessment, since no additional action is necessary as to that determination."

Species said to be at risk from increased ORV use include many of Florida'€™s most iconic species, such as the critically endangered Florida panther (with an estimated 100-180 adult cats remaining in the wild), Cape Sable seaside sparrow, wood stork, red-cockaded woodpecker, Everglades snail kite, eastern indigo snake and the American crocodile.

One aspect of the judge's ruling that particularly drew concern from conservation groups was his finding that, at least in the case of Big Cypress, the Park Service was within its perogative to place recreational use of the Addition Lands above preservation of those lands.

The overarching legal principles Plaintiffs seek to establish are simply not that easy. The conservation mandate of the NPS Establishment Act was tweaked by the subsequent Preserve Act and the Addition Act, both of which required multiple use management, which included the allowance of hunting and at least some recreational ORV use. As was previously stated, multiple use management is a deceptively simple term that describes the enormously complicated task of striking a balance among the many competing uses to which land can be put. The Court rejects Plaintiffs'€™ argument that every NPS decision must favor preservation if there is a conflict with another goal. This would not be 'striking a balance.'€ The Court finds that the substantive decisions by the NPS did not violate the Organic Act or the Establishment Acts.

In its petition to intervene, filed last week with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Coalition takes issue with both the judge's ruling on recreation vs. preservation, as well as his hands-off approach to the Park Service's decision to omit 40,000 acres of the Addition Lands from wilderness eligibility.

“We believe that the decision in the final [GMP] to omit from wilderness eligibility [40,000 acres] that clearly meet the established criteria, and the associated decision to open the affected acreage to ORV trail construction and use, are not consistent with several laws," their petition states. "Specifically, it was a 'particular concern' of the Coalition that NPS applied a standard for wilderness eligibility that, in the experience of the Coalition’s members, NPS had never before used for any unit of the National Park System and is at odds with NPS management policies and practices, as well as the language of the Wilderness Act."

In watching from the sidelines as the Park Service staff worked on developing the management plan for the Addition Lands, the Coalition "trust[ed] that the [NPS], after careful reconsideration, would see the importance of preserving these untrammeled, undeveloped, primeval lands consistent with its legal authorities rather than undertaking the ‘improvements’ and use contemplated by the [Addition GMP]. The Service, however, disregarded the comments of the Coalition and relied on its erroneous characterization of the Addition as a 'multiple use' area in approving a GMP that allows for 'substantial' ORV use that will have long-term, moderate, adverse impacts on the resources and values of the Addition."

The Coalition's petition also argued that Judge Steele has been inconsistent in his rulings involving ORV matters at Big Cypress down through the years.

In 2012, the district court ruled against NPS opening substantial areas of the Preserve to ORV use closed under a 2000 ORV management plan. Salazar, 877 F. Supp. 2d at 1301–04. In the present case, however, the district court ruled in favor of NPS opening substantial areas of the Addition to ORV use closed since at least 1996. NPCA, 46 F. Supp. 3d at 1302.


The district court’s 2012 decision found that Big Cypress is “highly sensitive to ORV use, which can cause severe and irreparable damages to [its] ecosystems,” and “[t]he use of ORVs will necessarily affect the soil, vegetation, wildlife, wildlife habitat and resources of a particular area.” 877 F. Supp. 2d at 1279, 1304.12

Despite these previous findings of negative impacts to the very resources Congress established and expanded the Preserve to protect, however, the district court upheld the expansion of ORV use in the Addition GMP.

At the end of the day, the Coalition argued, multiple use concepts rightfully are applied to U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands, which are managed under that concept, but not Park Service lands, which are managed for preservation.

"As former NPS Deputy Director and Coalition member Denis Galvin explained in testimony to Congress," the Coalition's petition notes, "'[N]ational parks do not have to sustain all recreation. . . . The [NPS] Organic Act, emphasizing conservation for future generations, is substantially different from the organic laws of [BLM and USFS]. . . . Together, these agencies provide for many forms of public recreation, but not all forms of recreation are appropriate in national parks.'"

Comments

Given court rulings over that past many years giving vast deference (pretty much 100%) to agency interpretation of federal land management laws (including the NPS Organic Act), I give this intervention/appeal initiative about a zero chance of being successful. Rather than futilely fighting agency decisions after they have been made, support groups might want to consider following the development of and fight off new legislation that will harm the parks in the future (like the awful riders in the 2015 defense authorization bill). The NPCA supported (or at least didn't strenuously object to) new resource damaging legislation for parks in that authorization bill in order to obtain new park unit designations.


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.