Ranchers, Eco-Activists Join
To Fight Military Over Flights

(Editor's note: Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. One of the groups joining stockmen in this suit has done its best to drive them off the public lands; it must be difficult in the extreme for the ranchers involved to sit elbow-to-elbow with such dedicated enemies. That should be unassailable evidence that they are serious about this issue.)

RENO, Nev. —(AP)— Ranchers and environmental activists in Nevada and eight other states are banding together to sue the Defense Department to halt low-level military training flights they say harm livestock, fish and wildlife.

Lawyers for the citizen activists planned to file the lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking an injunction to ban all Air Force overflights until the government conducts a broad assessment of their environmental impact.

Some of the military aircraft fly as low as 100 feet off the ground at speeds up to 645 miles per hour, the lawsuit says.

``It's kind of like a tornado that almost sucks your roof off. It shakes the house like a dead rat,'' Richard Smucker said last week from his ranch near Austin, Nev.

The suit accuses the Air Force of violating the National Environmental Policy Act, intentionally underestimating the impacts of the overflights by assessing the flight routes individually, rather than as a whole across the country.

``For over a decade, the Air Force has been trying to mask the nationwide scope and impacts of its program by breaking up the required analysis into many site-specific documents,'' said Simeon Herskovits, a lawyer for the Western Environmental Law Center in Taos, N.M.

The flights are ``sometimes deafening and startling to human beings and animals, causing wildlife and livestock to panic and stampede and impairing their ability to reproduce and raise their young,'' said Peter Galvin, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., one of the plaintiffs.

Air Force airspace used for the flight training program covers nearly one million square miles, the lawsuit says. Most of it covers public lands in the West.

Cumulatively, Galvin said, the low-level flights are harming numerous wildlife species, including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, bighorn sheep and antelope.

In addition, the flights harm ranchers and farmers by causing livestock to panic and stampede, injuring themselves and causing other property damage, the suit says.

Smucker said he backs the lawsuit because the military refuses to reimburse him and others for damages caused by the flights. In his case, the flights originate at Fallon Naval Air Station, a Navy airbase in Fallon, Nev.

``The majority of the time out here, it is quiet and peaceful,'' said Smucker, whose ranch is in the middle of northern Nevada about 170 miles east of Reno.

``Sometimes the only thing that warns us they are coming is the sonic boom. One got us here two years ago and raised the ceiling off the house about half an inch. We've had ranch hands kicked by horses,'' he said.

``I have the utmost respect for the pilots and the military because they protect our country, but when they do damage, they should pay for it,'' said Smucker, who estimates damage to his home at $22,000 over the past five years.

The Reno-based Rural Alliance for Military Accountability and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association based in Carson City are among the plaintiffs in the suit.

Most of the overflights in Nevada originate at Fallon Naval Air Station, which is not named in the lawsuit. However, a significant number of flights originate at Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas, which would be covered by the lawsuit.

Mike Estrada, a Nellis AFB spokesman, said base officials had not seen the lawsuit but they typically do not comment on pending litigation.