The Ninth Circuit held that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), but not NEPA, when it authorized Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to kill up to 85 California sea lions annually at the Bonneville Dam in order to protect salmon in the Columbia Ri...

The Seventh Circuit held that an environmental group has standing to challenge a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit allowing 18.4 acres of wetlands in a state park to be destroyed to make way for a landfill. A lower court held that the group lacked standing and therefore dismissed the case. It...

A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service's Public Wheeled Motorized Travel Management Decision for the Eldorado National Forest violated the ESA and the National Forest Management Act. The decision designates specific roads and trails within the forest as open to public motor vehicle ...

A district court held that the FWS' biological opinion (BiOp) for the U.S. Army's proposed ongoing and future operations at Fort Huachuca—a major military installation in southeastern Arizona—violates the ESA and is arbitrary and capricious. The BiOp concluded that the operations will not jeopar...

The Ninth Circuit, in an amended opinion, held that stormwater runoff from logging roads that is collected by and then discharged from a system of ditches, culverts, and channels is a point source discharge for which an NPDES permit is required. Accordingly, the court reversed a lower court dec...

The First Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying a motion to enjoin Maine state officials from allowing the use of any foothold traps to prevent the incidental take of Canadian lynx, a threatened species. The lower court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion, as the ani...

A district court, on a motion to amend judgment, extended the FWS' deadline for completing its biological opinion (BiOp) for the threatened delta smelt as well as the Bureau of Reclamation's deadline to complete review of the FWS' reasonable and prudent alternative (RPA) under NEPA. In December...

A district court held that environmental groups may go forward with their claims that coal-contaminated dust, slurry, water, and snow is being discharged from a coal loading facility into a bay in violation of the CWA. Although the facility has an NPDES permit, the groups argued that the per...

The Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision upholding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' conclusion that it had jurisdiction over wetlands on a developer's property. The Corps permissibly defined the scope of its review area as including 448 acres of similarly situated wetlands. B...

The D.C. Circuit denied a power company's petition for review of a FERC order that North Carolina did not waive its CWA certification authority necessary for the relicensing of the company's hydroelectric facilities. One of the preconditions of relicensing is receipt of a state certification th...