The Ninth Circuit reversed in part and vacated in part a lower court decision granting summary judgment for a proposed logging project in areas of the Kootenai National Forest where two threatened species—the Canada lynx and the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear—are present. An environmental group argue...

A district court granted environmental groups' motion for summary judgment and required USDA's Wildlife Services to conduct a more thorough analysis of the potential impacts of its predator-killing operations before expanding those operations to game animals and protected species. Environmental grou...

The Ninth Circuit vacated a lower court's conviction of a man in Montana for killing a threatened grizzly bear in violation of the ESA. The man claimed that he was acting in self-defense when he killed the bear behind his home in May 2014. Applying an "objectively reasonable" standard to the man's e...

A district court denied motions to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the federal designation of over 1.8 million acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains as critical habitat for three amphibian species. Associations representing California ranchers and farmers who are no longer able to graze livestock on th...

A district court held that FWS' decision to withdraw its proposed listing of the "bi-state sage grouse" as threatened under the ESA was arbitrary and capricious. FWS recognized that one of the studies it relied on was questionable. In addition, FWS violated its own policy when it failed to offer any...

The Fourth Circuit, in an unpublished decision, vacated FWS' incidental take statement that authorized a pipeline project along the Atlantic coast to take certain threatened or endangered species. The limits set by the agency were so indeterminate that they undermined the incidental take statement's...

The Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that a zoo violated the ESA due to its mistreatment of endangered lemurs and tigers. On appeal, the zoo argued that the animal rights activists who filed the suit lacked standing. The zoo also claimed that even if the activists did have standing, th...

A district court held that FWS must comply with a FOIA request for information from its Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS), which, among other things, the agency uses to track species being imported or exported; monitor quotas of a particular species; and intervene in illegal trad...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' issuance of a CWA §404 permit authorizing the discharge of materials into the Santa Clara River as part of a large-scale residential, commercial, and industrial development project in Los Angeles County. The proposed project would encompass...

The Ninth Circuit upheld FWS' decision to end its 1987 sea otter translocation program. FWS created an experimental reserve population of southern sea otters some distance from the main population, but in 2012, FWS deemed the program a failure and terminated it. FWS' interpretation of the statute al...