A district court, in a 114-page opinion, held that a regional planning agency violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it approved the expansion of a ski resort near Lake Tahoe. The evidence fails to support the agency's finding that a reduced alternative was not economically infeasibl...
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 affirmed a lower court decision denying a conservation group's petition seeking to vacate a city's certification of an environmental impact report (EIR) for the development of a park. The group argued that the EIR wrongly defined the project to exclude pending residentia...
A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a municipal water district's petition challenging a water replenishment district's "water emergency" declaration for California's Central Basin. The water district argued that the replenishment district failed to comply with the Ca...
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...