The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday dismissed a bid by a coalition of environmental groups to kill the 2003 deal signed by then-Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton to end a Utah lawsuit. The settlement froze the state's wilderness study areas at 3.2 million acres and eliminated from consideration nearly 6 million acres of potential wilderness that was inventoried during the Clinton administration.

But the appeals court did not uphold the settlement either. Instead, the panel shipped the case back to U.S. District Judge Dee Benson for further review. Benson signed a consent decree authorizing the settlement on April 14, 2003. He then allowed the environmental coalition, led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), to challenge it just shy of two months later.

SUWA and its allies cried foul at the time, arguing that Benson waited until virtually the final hour before allowing them to intervene - and not until after they appealed to the 10th Circuit. But because no final judgment was ever rendered, the appeals court said, it has no jurisdiction in the case.

"The [district] court's issuance of orders after its April 14 order indicates the case remained pending, and that the district court did not intend its . . . order to be a final, appealable decision," the 10th Circuit ruled.

Despite Tuesday's setback, SUWA Conservation Director Heidi McIntosh says the coalition is satisfied that the settlement will finally be reviewed on its merits.

Opponents of the deal contend it was negotiated by the state and Interior with no public input, violates public land practices dating back to the Reagan administration and makes it impossible for the Bureau of Land Management to give interim wilderness protection to BLM lands in the West.

"We're hoping for a speedy review, because these BLM lands are now being open to development," said McIntosh.

The "No More Wilderness Settlement" was hatched by Utah and Interior to end a lawsuit the state filed in 1996 challenging wilderness areas inventoried after 1991, the final year of the Wilderness Study Area survey ordered by Congress.

Mark Ward, a Utah assistant attorney general who oversees that office's public lands division, was unavailable for comment.

jbaird@sltrib.com