UPOM wins bison lawsuit—documents obtained from FWP detail high degree of coordination with APR
We’re pleased to announce that FWP has agreed to settle our lawsuit against them regarding their bison management plan. They’ve agreed to scrap the bison plan and will not undertake a new EIS for bison management for at least ten years. You can read the settlement agreement here.
As part of the litigation against FWP to challenge their bison management plan, UPOM requested all communications from FWP related to the bison management plan. We received over 2500 pages of documents. Through that discovery, we learned that FWP was in deep negotiations with APR to establish a herd of free-roaming bison on the CMR wildlife refuge. This despite repeated claims by FWP that they were not considering any specific relocation sites as part of their bison EIS.
Due to the damning information that was discovered through the course of our litigation, FWP was eager to settle the case. It was clear from communications FWP had related to the EIS that they were acting in an inappropriate and likely illegal manner by having secret meetings with APR, excluding their selected site (UL Bend on the CMR) from EIS analysis, and conducting the EIS to reach a predetermined outcome. In short, we had them dead to rights and they knew it. You can read our settlement offer linked here.
You can read some of this correspondence in the documents linked here. Here’s what you will find: