Oregon Natural Desert Association v. Bureau of Land Management

I. Background

A. The Physical and Legal Landscape

1. Southeastern Oregon

The BLM-managed land at issue (which we will sometimes refer to as the “planning area”) spreads over roughly four and a half million acres of rugged, remote land in southeastern Oregon’s Malheur, Grant, and Harney Counties. These lands lie in the rain shadow of the Cascade and Coastal ranges, and so are sunny and semi-arid. The sagebrush plains that charac- terize the region are varied by high mountains, rising to over 8,000 feet, and by the valleys of the Malheur and Owyhee riv- ers.

A similar landscape (not at issue in this appeal) extends into Idaho to the west. We have described that region, in terms equally applicable to the Oregon lands, as “[s]tartling in its ecological diversity, from arid sagebrush desert to lush juniper woodlands,” and as including “spectacular and wild canyonlands” along the Owyhee river. Idaho Watersheds Project v. Hahn, 307 F.3d 815, 821 (9th Cir. 2002).

It is not simply the landscape that marks the planning area. The area is also home to tens of thousands of people who live and work in this dry and demanding territory. European settle- ment of the region began as…