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 Federal Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision dismissing a developer's Fifth Amendment takings claim against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for denying its application for a CWA §404 wetlands fill permit. The property is located on a barrier island of Florida, much of which is ...

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...