ELR Citation: ELR 20072
No(s). 05-4102 (10th Cir. Apr 6, 2006)

The court upholds a lower court decision that a 123-acre timber-thinning project to treat beetle-infested trees in Utah's Fishlake National Forest complied with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Adminstrative Procedure Act. An environmental group argued that the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) failed to consider the project's cumulative impacts on fish and wildlife, but the project fell within the general confines of a categorical exclusion for small acreage timber-thinning projects. And since there were no extraordinary circumstances present, an environmental assessment was not required. Nor did the Forest Service violate the Fishlake forest plan by failing to collect adequate data for management indicator species. The forest plan's monitoring requirements do not apply to categorically excluded projects, and even if they did apply, the Forest Service collected adequate population trend data. Last, the lower court did not err in using the Forest Service's 2002 planning rules instead of the 1982 planning rules in evaluating the project.