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Door County Environmental Council Column

Litigation to force complete critical habitat designation for the endangered Hines Emerald Dragonfly continues. To bring you up to date: the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had removed large areas of the Hiawatha National Forest in Upper Michigan, a known Hines Emerald habitat area, from their proposed critical habitat designation.

This resulted in legal action by the Center For Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with regional organizations, including the Door County Environmental Council (DCEC), to ensure that these forest lands continue to be included in the designation.

Reacting to this suit, U.S. Fish & Wildlife has proposed a settlement wherein they would re-open the original proposed designations for comment in fall of 2009 and issue a new designation by April 2010. They would keep the current designation in place until the new one is issued in April of 2010. They would also be willing to keep the excluded Hiawatha Forest areas as critical habitat in place until the new designation is issued. We are unsure how such an agreement would be recorded or made enforceable, if at all.

The government’s lawyer also threatened the possibility that if we were not inclined to settle under these conditions, they might go ahead and remand/re-open the critical habitat designation on their own, thus effectively ending our case.

This now appears the course the government is likely to take.

The potential downside for us is that Fish & Wildlife might not keep the current designations in place during the remand/re-open process, and we will have to petition the court to force them to do so. There is no guarantee that a new designation would not again exclude the National Forest land. Though, if it’s excluded, they would have to provide additional rationales.

After conferring with all of the parties bringing this litigation, the consensus of the group was that we will proceed with the litigation, and take whatever steps are needed if the government remands/re-opens the case.

We remain steadfast that the Hiawatha Forest lands in Upper Michigan must be included in the final habitat designation, however long it takes. Members of DCEC own and visit lands in the Hiawatha National Forest, and they are directly involved and supportive of this critical designation for the Hines Emerald, as are landowners here in Door County with Hines Emerald habitat.

For further information call 920.743.6003, email or [email protected] or visit http://www.dcec-wi.org.