ELR Citation: ELR 20045
No(s). 90-C-0989 (E.D. Wis. Mar 7, 1994)

The court holds that the U.S. Forest Service's method of studying and providing for biological diversity in developing the forest management plan for the Chequamegon National Forest in Wisconsin did not violate the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) or the National Environmental Policy Act. The court first holds that plaintiff environmental groups have standing to challenge the forest management plan. Although the plan does not spell out the numerous site-specific projects necessary to implement it, the plan does require that such projects be undertaken and it dictates the projects' cumulative effect. Because the plan mandates the very management activity that will ultimately cause plaintiffs' injury, excessive forest fragmentation, that the Service has yet to inflict injury through development of site-specific projects does not render the injury conjectural or speculative. The court holds that plaintiffs also have standing to challenge the adequacy of the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the forest plan. The alleged injury concerns a concrete and legally cognizable interest that could be impaired as a result of the agency's failure to prepare the final EIS properly. The court also holds that the forest plan is ripe for judicial review, because notwithstanding the need to develop site-specific projects, the collection of decisions that comprise the forest plan is a single agency action.

The court holds that the Service did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in failing to base its diversity analysis for the forest plan on the principles of conservation biology that plaintiffs set forth in comments to the Service. Plaintiffs asserted that without providing for some large reserve within the forest, the Service's plan would result in excessive forest fragmentation and would disturb many species' habitats. Although the Service must study the effect of the forest plan on biological diversity, it was not bound to apply the particular scientific theory that plaintiffs espouse. The court next holds that the Service's chosen methodology for formulating the plan rationally addresses the elements of diversity set forth in the NFMA. Although the Service's failure to describe in detail in its EIS the method it used in determining optimal prescriptions for vegetative diversity suggest a degree of arbitrariness in the selection of the optimal prescriptions, it is not arbitrary enough to undermine the analysis as a whole. Further, the principles underlying the selection of optimal prescriptions are identified and explained, and plaintiffs have not attempted to show, nor has the court found, that the prescriptions themselves are at all inconsistent with those principles.

Counsel for Plaintiffs
Walter Kuhlmann
Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field
One S. Pinekney St., Ste. 410, Madison WI 53701
(608) 257-9521

Counsel for Defendants
Wells D. Burgess, Louise Milkman
Environment and Natural Resources Division
U.S. Department of Justice, Washington DC 20530
(202) 514-2000