The Ninth Circuit rejected challleges to a 2012 DOI decision to withdraw from new uranium mining claims, up to twenty years, over one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park. The lands were withdrawn, subject to existing valid claims, with the intent to protect water resources in the G...

A district court held that the state of Texas cannot challenge the listing of the golden-cheeked warbler as endangered under the ESA. The state brought a lawsuit against FWS alleging that the agency unlawfully dismissed a petition to delist the golden-cheeked warbler. The petition provided evidence ...

A district court held that a Forest Service fire salvage restoration project could proceed despite its risk to protected species. The Cedar Fire began on August 16, 2016, and burned for three weeks over 29,000 acres of mixed conifer and white fir forest, most of which were in the Sequoia National Fo...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of an injunction to halt a logging project in Oregon. A conservation group brought a citizen suit under the ESA challenging a logging project it claimed would result in the taking of the marbled murrelet, a seabird listed as a threatened species. The ...

The D.C. Circuit held that the Park Service did not violate NEPA when it authorized recreational hunts of elk in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. The Grand Teton and the National Elk Refuge (Refuge) are home to the “Jackson herd,” one of the largest concentrations of elk in North America. ...