Tag Archives: Donald Molloy

Feds get until 2018 to hand in their Lynx recovery homework

Environmental Issues, News, ,

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gets until 2018 to come up with a Canada Lynx recovery plan . . .

A federal judge on Wednesday set a 2018 deadline for the government to complete a long-delayed recovery plan for imperiled Canada lynx in the Lower 48 states.

Wildlife advocates had asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy to push the government into faster action on the snow-loving big cats, which were added to the list of threatened species in 2000.

But after federal officials said budget issues and competing priorities were slowing their work, Molloy indicated Wednesday in an order that he was reluctant to second-guess them. He said the January 2018 deadline proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was reasonable.

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Federal judge upholds delisting of wolves in Montana and Idaho

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From the Missoulian . . .

Strongly disagreeing with his own decision, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy on Wednesday upheld a congressional rider removing gray wolves from Endangered Species Act protection.

Barring a successful appeal, the decision means wolves are delisted in Montana and Idaho, and those states may go ahead with their scheduled wolf hunting seasons this fall.

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Related story: Groups to appeal wolf ruling to 9th Circuit

President nominates Kalispell attorney Dana Christensen to replace U.S. District Judge Molloy

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Kalispell attorney Dana Christensen has been nominated to replace U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy who presided over many significant environmental lawsuits over the past years, including the recent effort to keep gray wolves on the Endangered Species List. Today’s Missoulian has the story . . .

The president has nominated Kalispell attorney Dana Christensen to replace U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula, who will begin senior status this summer.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., submitted the Kalispell attorney’s name to President Barack Obama for consideration earlier this year, and on Wednesday the president announced Christensen’s nomination along with those of five others to district judgeships nationwide.

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Judge Molloy rejects settlement to lift wolf protections in Montana and Idaho

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This is not a huge surprise. Molloy refused to budge from his previous position that the Endangered Species Act does not provide for a staged withdrawal of protections based on political boundaries . . .

A federal judge has denied a proposed settlement agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and 10 conservation groups that would have lifted endangered species protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula on Saturday rejected the agreement that could have led to public hunting of some 1,300 wolves in the two states.

In the 24-page decision, Molloy cited the court’s lack of authority to put part of an endangered species population under state management and expose that population to hunting, noting, “Congress has clearly determined that animals on the ESA must be protected as such,” and the court couldn’t “exercise its discretion to allow what Congress forbids.”

He also said he couldn’t approve the settlement proposed in March because not all the parties involved in the case agreed with it. Part of the argument for the settlement was that it could end litigation, but Molloy noted that was unlikely given the opposition by some to the proposed settlement.

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