A district court vacated the Trump Administration's rescission of the Obama Administration's Waste Prevention Rule, which was enacted to reduce methane waste from oil and gas operations on public and tribal lands. California, New Mexico, and environmental groups argued the rescission violated the AP...
A district court granted in part summary judgment for nonprofit groups in a suit concerning a logging project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. One group argued the project violated the Roadless Rule because the Forest Service was surreptitiously planning to construct new roads in an in...
A district court vacated the Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant an easement under the Mineral Leasing Act for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which runs from North Dakota to Illinois, after previously ruling that the Corps must prepare an EIS for the pipeline to comply with NEPA. The court found...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for BLM in a challenge to its 2017 offer and sale of oil and gas leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Environmental groups argued that BLM violated NEPA by failing to prepare an EA or EIS for the lease sale and failing to take a hard look at it...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and remanded in part a district court order remanding to FWS several issues concerning its 2017 rule removing ESA protections for the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear population. The district court held that FWS failed to adequately consider the impact of delisting...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for BLM in a challenge to the agency's "geld and release" plan for wild horses in northeastern Nevada. An animal rights group argued that BLM violated NEPA by failing to prepare an EIS for the plan because five of the Act's intensity factors demonstrated t...
The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service raises important questions about the scope of the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA’s) protections for critical habitat. Foremost among them is a question one might think was long settled: what is “habitat”? In a short ruling, the Weyerhaeuser Court opined that “critical habitat” must first be “habitat,” but it did not attempt to define exactly what habitat is or how much deference the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should get on what is both a biological and policy question.