At the Visalia workshop, the Park Service staff spoke several times of the mandate that Congress passed as a result of this lawsuit.
If I understand the sequence of events, SEKI stalled and never addressed the use of stock, so they were sued by the HSHA, and lost. Then, when the ruling came out, rather than proceeding in a sensible manner, they declared that they would shut down all pack operations this summer. So then Congress stepped in, calling a shutdown a loss of jobs, and quickly passed the legislation, which required continuing the use of stock and also required a study and plan to be completed within three years.
So now the Park Service has a mandate to produce the plan within 3 years. Seems to me if they hadn't tried to shut down all use of livestock, which the court ruling did not require, they wouldn't have this mandatory deadline.
