A coalition of conservation groups that came out on the short end of a ruling pertaining to off-road vehicle use in the Addition Lands section of Big Cypress National Preserve has asked the judge to reconsider four aspects of his decision.

In the ruling last month, U.S. District Judge John Steele upheld the National Park Service's decision to place an emphasis on recreation above preservation in nearly 150,000 acres of the preserve. The Big Cypress lawsuit, filed in 2011 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club, the South Florida Wildlands Association, and others, claimed that the management plan preserve officials adopted for the Addition Lands allowed for too much ORV use. The filing argued that widespread motorized traffic would "degrade the unique natural resources" of the Addition Lands, "create conflict with non-motorized users, and fragment one of the last major wilderness areas in the eastern United States."

In his ruling, Judge Steele also ruled that Big Cypress officials both correctly analyzed the Addition Lands for wilderness eligibility and were within the law and not motivated by politics when they decided to remove 40,000 acres from wilderness consideration. "The Wilderness Eligibility Assessment has been made, and there is no suggestion that anything is in the works to change it," Judge Steele wrote in his 73-page opinion. "Judicial action will not inappropriately interfere with further administrative action regarding the Wilderness Eligibility Assessment, since no additional action is necessary as to that determination."

Eric Glitzenstein, whose Washington, D.C., law firm represents Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Sierra Club, Wilderness Watch, Florida Biodiversity Project, and others in the matter, has asked the judge to reconsider the following aspects of his decision:

* The National Park Service's "unexplained substantial reduction in the amount of acreage eligible for Wilderness designation;"

* The Park Service's "failure to adequately analyze the impact of ORV use on the use of the Addition by other users;

* The Park Service's "failure to adequately analyze the impact of ORV use on displacement of endangered Florida panthers to private lands where they are at increased risk of road mortality, and;

* The Park Service's "failure to engage in formal consultation under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act with respect to impacts of ORV use on the Indigo snake (a threatened species)."

"In enacting the statutes authorizing both the original (Big Cypress) Preserve and the Addition, Congress certainly contemplated that some ORV use and hunting might occur," Mr. Glitzenstein said in an email to the Traveler. "But Congress also clearly intended that any such use would occur only to the extent that it did not interfere or impede the overriding mission of resource preservation."