The Ninth Circuit dismissed an environmental group's ESA and NEPA claims against FWS, the National Park Service (NPS), and the state of Montana in a case concerning the "helicopter hazing" of bison in Yellowstone National Park. To minimize disease transfer between wild bison and cattle in the Greate...

A district court held that the federal government may not regulate the take of the Utah prairie dog, a threatened species, on nonfederal lands under the ESA. In 2012, FWS issued a rule authorizing the take of the Utah prairie dog, via permit, on "agricultural lands, [private property] within [.5 mil...

A district court granted summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on all but one claim in a lawsuit filed against the agency challenging its decision in 2013 to make certain "flow augmentation releases" (FARs) of water from a dam located in the Trinity River Division of the Centra...

A district court granted in part and denied in part motions for summary judgment in a case involving logging projects in the Flathead National Forest. In the case, environmental groups challenged the Forest Service's and FWS' authorization of the Glacier Loon Fuels Reduction and Forest Health Projec...

A district court upheld FWS' withdrawal of a proposed rule that would have listed the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species. Environmental groups challenged the decision, arguing that it failed to account for all of the statutory listing factors provided in the ESA, did not rely on the bes...

The Fifth Circuit held that DOI's ban on owning bald eagle feathers under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). DOI's implementation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act prohibits American Indians who are not members of federally recog...

A district court upheld FWS' designation of 1,544 acres of a privately owned tree farm in Louisiana as critical habitat essential for the conservation of the dusky gopher frog, an endangered species. The frog, listed in 2001, is located only in Mississippi; it does not presently occupy the tree farm...

The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by five states bordering the Great Lakes in which they seek to compel the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take immediate action to prevent invasive Asian carp from crossing into Lake Michigan. The five states—Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, ...

The Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court decision barring the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) from issuing new permits to withdraw water from rivers that feed the estuary where wild whooping cranes make their winter home. In that case, the district court held that TCEQ violated ESA ...

A district court held that FWS' delay in developing and implementing a recovery plan for the Canada lynx, which was listed as threatened in 2000, is unreasonable. The ESA directs FWS to prepare a recovery plan for listed species but does not include a timetable or indication of the speed with which ...