The D.C. Circuit affirmed a lower court decision upholding FWS' listing of the polar bear as threatened under the ESA, in part due to the effects of global climate change. Below, a number of industry groups argued that the listing rule is arbitrary and capricious under the APA and that FWS' action s...

The Fourth Circuit vacated a biological opinion the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) prepared as part of EPA's reregistration process for three pesticides—chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion. The biological opinion concluded that the pesticides would jeopardize the viability of certain P...

A district court vacated FWS' final rule designating approximately 187,157 square miles in Alaska and adjacent territorial and U.S. waters as critical habitat for the polar bear, ruling that the designation "went too far and was too extensive." Although the final rule is valid in many respects, the ...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's adoption of the Idaho Roadless Rule, which creates different categories of land within Idaho's 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. The court affirmed and adopted as its own a lower court ruling that also approved the rule. FWS's biologi...

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision granting lumber companies' petition to delist coho salmon from the California list of endangered species. The companies' petition sought to show that there was no basis for the California Fish & Game Commission's 1995 finding that coho...

A district court held that NOAA Fisheries adequately considered economic impacts when it designated 8.6 million acres in California, Oregon, and Washington as critical habitat for the green sturgeon, a threatened species. Developers argued that the agency was required to balance the economic impacts...

A district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by five states seeking an order requiring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to create physical barriers in the waterways connecting Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River Basin in order to prevent bighead and silver carp from migrating into the Great Lake...

A district court granted an environmental group's motion to preliminarily enjoin the logging of 11 timber sales and to halt any further logging activities in known occupied marbled murrelet sites in Oregon's Tillamook, Clatsop, and Elliot state forests. Defendants argued that the case was moot becau...

The First Circuit upheld an amendment to the fishery management plan for the Northeast Multispecies Groundfish Fishery. Among other things, the amendment altered and expanded the fishery's preexisting "sector allocation program" and established new restrictions on fishing activities to prevent overf...

A district court held that DOI complied with NEPA, the ESA, and FLPMA when it approved the construction of a large solar power plant in California's Mojave Desert. Environmental groups filed suit, alleging that BLM and FWS inadequately considered the project's effect on existing populations of deser...