ELR Citation: 45 ELR 20085
No(s). 1:14-cv-00675 (D. Or. Apr 15, 2015) (Panner, J.)

A district court adopted a magistrate judge's report and recommendation and ordered FWS to finalize and approve a comprehensive conservation plan for five national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin Complex on or before August 1, 2016. FWS conceded, and the court had already ordered, that FWS violated a mandatory, non-discretionary deadline to issue the plan. At issue, therefore, was not whether an injunction should issue, but what the timeline on that injunction should be. FWS identified all of the remaining necessary tasks to complete and approve a final plan and EIS, and proposed a completion date of October 18, 2017. Yet, FWS' preplanning for the conservation plan began in 2008, and public scoping began in 2010. In addition, FWS has consistently projected the plan to take three years from beginning to completion. The court acknowledged that there have been challenges and delays along the way, resulting in the final date being pushed out later and later on several occasions. Yet, it found it unclear why, after all the work that FWS claims has been done, FWS continues to need an additional three full years to finalize and approve the plan. The court, therefore, set a date of August 1, 2016, which gives FWS nearly eight years from the beginning of the planning process, and nearly four years from the non-discretionary deadline mandated by Congress to finalize and approve a plan for the Klamath Complex. The court applied the reasonableness standard set forth by the Ninth Circuit in Environmental Defense Fund v. Babbitt, 73 F.3d 867 (9th Cir. 1995), to determine the appropriate timeline for agency action after a failure to comply with a mandatory statutory deadline. (Plaintiffs' counsel included Maura C. Fahey of the Crag Law Center in Portland, Or.).