Approval for the Caldwell Canyon phosphate mine in southeastern Idaho was withdrawn by a federal judge who ruled federal land managers in the Trump administration didn’t in part properly consider the mine’s impact on sage grouse, a bird species that has seen an 80 percent decline in population since 1965.

Fox News reported that U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s decision came five months after he found fault with the way the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the project in 2019.

The mine has been proposed by P4 Production LLC, a subsidiary of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG. Three environmental groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians — sued.

Winmill ruled that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws on several counts when it approved the mine. Among the faults were failing to consider the indirect effects of processing ore at a nearby plant and the cumulative impacts on sage grouse.

Winmill’s decision issued remedies for those violations: Vacating both the mine’s approval and the environmental analysis of the project , as well as any other decision that relied on those documents.

“We believe the court’s decision to vacate the BLM’s approvals is excessive,” Bayer AG said in a statement. The company is assessing its next steps, which could include an appeal.

“We believe the few specific deficiencies the court identified in the BLM’s assessment can and should be fully addressed expeditiously,” the statement said. Bayer said it plans to have the mine operational in the next few years.

The proposed venture would include two new openpit mines to extract phosphate ore, according to court documents. It would have resulted in the disturbance of about 1,550 acres of previously undeveloped land nearly 300 miles southeast of Boise.

The mine was projected to last for 40 years, with ore taken by truck or rail to a nearby processing plant.

There, the ore would be processed to produce glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world. Bayer, which acquired the herbicide’s original producer.

Bayer this year began transitioning glyphosate out of its U.S. residential lawn and garden products and using other ingredients as a way to reduce future litigation risks. Agriculture and professional products will not be changed, and the company said it stands behind the safety of its glyphosate products.

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