The court upholds a district court dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction of recreational groups' claims that the U.S. Forest Service violated the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it designated certain areas of the Shawnee National Forest as Research Natur...
The court holds that a district court erroneously denied an environmental group's motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the U.S. Forest Service from proceeding with certain timber sales in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. In separate litigation, a district court held that a Forest Serv...
The court reverses and remands a lower court decision holding that a portion of the National Park Service's (NPS') backcountry management plan (BMP) for the Canyonlands National Park in Utah that allows motor vehicle access on a 10-mile segment of road violates the National Park Service Organic Act ...
The court upholds a U.S. Forest Service recreation management plan that provided for a three-day window every other week during which motorized water craft would be barred from part of the wild section of the Snake River in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. The court first holds that the Fo...
The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) guidelines for carrying out the certification of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's (WIPP's) compliance with radioactive waste disposal regulations are specific enough to qualify as "criteria" under 40 C.F.R. Part 191. The court note...
The court dismisses environmental groups' complaint alleging that the National Environmental Policy Act requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to prepare a supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) addressing new information concerning the use of the Los Alamos National L...
The court denies environmental groups' motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapon Stockpile Stewardship and Management (SSM) facilities, as well as activities or major upgrades to mission capability based on alleged violations of the National Env...
Editors' Summary: EPA recently proposed for public comment a draft guidance document that discusses voluntary federal recommendations for hundreds of thousands of nonhazardous industrial waste sites that currently escape RCRA regulation. In this Dialogue, a member of the chartered advisory group that assisted the Agency in the development of the document discusses its attributes and shortcomings. The Dialogue describes the history of EPA's use of RCRA Subtitle D and the statutory and programmatic obstacles to meaningful federal regulation.
In discussions of the economies of the Mountain West, natural landscapes tend to be looked upon from either of two perspectives. The first is tied to the history of European settlement of the region. Natural landscapes are looked upon as the source of the natural resource raw materials that supply the region's "basic" industries: mining and metal processing, farming and ranching and the food processing associated with them, and timber harvest and the manufacturing based on it. The second view focuses more on the present and expected future.
On March 1, 1999, at 11:56 p.m. Pacific Coast time, the people of the United States took title to the Headwaters Forest, the largest remaining stand of privately owned, old growth redwoods in the world. Uncertain until the end, the transaction was recorded only minutes before the $250 million appropriation of federal funds for the purchase expired.