REGIONAL- The Wilderness Watch lawsuit seeking to curtail towboats in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was finally back in court again after two years of motions and countermotions in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.
Wilderness Watch and attorneys for the U.S. Forest Service made their cases before U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel on a motion for summary judgment filed by Wilderness Watch last fall after efforts to settle the suit proved unsuccessful. Summary judgment is a way for a judge to rule on the legal merits of a case once both sides are agreed on the essential facts.
Even so, particularly at the federal level, a judge can take months to issue a ruling.
The lawsuit
Montana-based Wilderness Watch filed the lawsuit, which challenges the number of towboats allowed to operate in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, back in February 2023, alleging that the USFS is allowing excessive towboat and other motorboat use in the BWCAW. They allege that violates wilderness protection mandates of several laws, including the 1964 Wilderness Act, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978, and the National Forest Management Act.
The USFS has employed an array of counterarguments, including a failed motion for the court to dismiss the case for “lack of standing.” The forest service argues that Wilderness Watch’s allegations are based on a misunderstanding of how the Wilderness Act and the BWCAW Act are interpreted together.
An initial request by Wilderness Watch for a preliminary injunction to prohibit all towboats in the Boundary Waters was rejected by the judge. However, the court also ordered the USFS to continue an ongoing moratorium on issuing any new special use permits for towboats.
Since the initial fight over the preliminary injunction, the suit has been mired in motions and countermotions. The case stalled between July 2023 and February 2024 while Judge Brasel deliberated on whether to grant the USFS motion to dismiss, which she ultimately denied. That set the stage for the summary judgment arguments laid out for the court this week.
A decision on the motion likely won’t be issued before fall.