The Ninth Circuit held that BLM's roundup or "gather" of approximately 1,639 wild horses and 160 burros from the Twin Peaks Herd Management Area (HMA) on the California-Nevada border complied with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act and NEPA. Post-gather, 793 wild horses and 160 burros resid...

A district court granted summary judgment in favor of NMFS in a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts and New Hampshire challenging the agency's decision to promulgate Frameworks 48 and 50 regulating New England’s Multispecies Fishery under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Th...

The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Reclamation should have consulted with FWS or NMFS on impacts to the threatened delta smelt prior to renewing long-term water contracts pertaining to California's Central Valley Project. ESA §7(a)(2) requires such consultation so long as the agency has “s...

A district court, in a memorandum opinion, dismissed environmental groups' lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for APA, NEPA, and ESA violations in connection with two lease sales in the area where the Deepwater Horizon spill ...

A district court upheld two court-approved settlement agreements between environmental advocacy groups and the FWS in a multi-district litigation that require the agency to determine by certain deadlines whether to list 251 species as endangered or threatened under the ESA or find that listing these...

The D.C. Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision rejecting an animal rights group's FOIA request for records concerning National Institutes of Health (NIH) investigations of animal abuse at a university research lab. NIH issued "Glomar" responses, meaning that the agency...

A district court largely upheld several administrative decisions made by federal agencies approving the construction of various aspects of an offshore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, remanding only two issues to FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for ESA violations. Four gr...

The Ninth Circuit, in a 170+ page opinion, reversed in part and affirmed in part a lower court decision invalidating the FWS' 2008 biological opinion (BiOp) that concluded that the Central Valley Project (CVP) would jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt and its habitat. The project s...

A district court extended FWS' deadline to complete its biological opinion (BiOp) for the threatened delta smelt, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's deadline to complete its related analysis under NEPA, and NMFS' deadline to complete its BiOp and a related NEPA analysis for endangered salmonid species...

A district court vacated a 2008 rule issued by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) that governs the operation of coal mining activities near and through streams. The 2008 rule revised a 1983 rule, retaining the previous rule's stream buffer zone requirement, but establishi...