Ruling upends road deal

RENO -- A federal appeals panel has revived a 10-year legal battle over a remote Nevada road on national forest land and a threatened fish by siding with environmental groups who argued they were denied participation earlier this decade in talks to quell the bickering.

The recent ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco vacates a truce reached in 2001 and started five years later between the U.S. Forest Service and Elko County over South Canyon Road.

The decision sends the case back to federal court in Reno.

The ruling issued May 20 reversed a lower court order against The Wilderness Society and Colorado-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness, who argued the Justice Department lacked authority to cede the road's right of way to the county without environmental studies and a public process.

"This ruling certainly puts the status of the settlement agreement in doubt," said Ed Monnig, the third supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest to grapple with the case, which has simmered since the mid-1990s.

Kristin McQueary, Elko County chief deputy district attorney, said more appeals are expected.

"We're going to request the whole Ninth Circuit consider our problem, not just the three-judge panel," McQueary said.

She said the county was looking into whether it could appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

South Canyon Road is a narrow stretch of dirt and gravel that meanders along the Jarbidge River, habitat to the southernmost population of threatened bull trout. The road leads to a wilderness area along the Nevada-Idaho line.

Michael Freeman, an attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund who represented the environmental groups, called the ruling a victory.

"It's a big step toward protecting the Jarbidge wilderness area and making sure the bull trout get the protection they deserve," he said.

The environmental groups last year filed a separate lawsuit in federal court in Las Vegas to seek permanent closure of the road.

The legal wrangling began in 1995 when South Canyon Road was washed out by floodwaters.

It became a flash point for anti-government activists three years later when the county, unwilling to wait any longer for the Forest Service to decide the road's fate, sent in its own crew to fix it.

County officials argued the road was a county road because it was there before the national forest was created.