A federal appeals court allowed the U.S. Justice Department last Wednesday to withdraw its appeal of a September decision that rescinded an Annual Funding Agreement (AFA) between the federal government and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, an integral piece of the oversight puzzle for the National Bison Range in Moiese.

“We decided a long, drawn-out court battle was not the best way to protect the Bison Range resources,” CSKT Chairman E.T. “Bud” Moran said in a statement on Monday. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with our federal partners.”

The reversal of the AFA effectively laid off 13 Tribal members employed by the CSKT under the agreement, just a week before the annual roundup at the National Bison Range last year.

The original ruling, announced on Sept. 28, 2010, responded to a lawsuit filed by the Blue Goose Alliance in Dec. 2008 alleging that the federal Department of Interior, as well as intervenor-defendant CSKT, violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by not filing a proper environmental assessment or other such document before continuing joint control of the Range in a 2008 AFA between the Tribes and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), a chapter of the DOI.

The two sides had previously qualified for a categorical exclusion of an environmental assessment on a 2005 AFA because they proved that “the proposed action will have no significant adverse effect on the quality of the human environment.” But, when a new AFA was created to cover 2008, “the record shows that Defendants did not formally invoke the categorical exclusion for the 2008 AFA as they had previously done for the 2005 AFA,” United States District Court Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion says, resulting in her order to “set aside” the 2008 AFA.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a Washington, D.C.-based group that participated in the 2008 lawsuit, released a statement last week about the dropped appeal, saying that “no new proposed agreement has emerged” and that the FWS is currently operating with a “skeleton crew,” remaining “at least four months behind a normal hiring process.”

The CSKT release said the tribes “initially filed appeals but ultimately decided together that it was not in the best interests of the Bison Range resources to pursue protracted litigation. Instead, the CSKT have opted to focus on jointly working toward continuing the federal-tribal partnership at the Bison Range.”

Dean Rundle, the FWS refuge program supervisor for Montana, Wyoming and Utah, said the Range has employed eight staff members throughout the winter and that as spring arrives, more employees will be added.

While long term plans for the future of the Range are yet to be determined, Rundle said it continues to run as a smooth operation.

“It doesn’t change the Services goal to work with the CSKT in the long run at the Nation Bison Range complex,” he said. “We typically will be staffing up with seasonal help through the summer season so we hope to have people coming aboard around April and I don’t see why we can’t do that.”