ELR Citation: 49 ELR 20153
No(s). CV-13-00151-TUC-RCC (D. Ariz. Sep 12, 2019) (Collins, J.)

A district court granted in part a motion for summary judgment in a challenge to FWS' 2012 biological opinions concerning protections for the threatened Mexican spotted owl. An environmental group argued the opinions, which concluded that timber management activities proposed by the U.S. Forest Service for six national forests in Arizona and New Mexico were not likely to jeopardize the species' existence or its designated critical habitat, were arbitrary and capricious because the jeopardy determination failed to account for the species' recovery. FWS asserted that the opinions considered recovery because the forests' management plans confronted the threats to the species and compliance with the plans would help increase habitat and thus help the species recover. The court found that stand-alone forest measures protecting habitat did not reasonably address recovery because preservation of national forest land would never provide enough information about population trends to allow for delisting or an accurate assessment of whether the population was recovering. It therefore ordered timber management actions in the forests to cease pending reinitiation of formal consultation to reassess the jeopardy determination.