In an unpublished opinion, the D.C. Circuit affirmed dismissal of a challenge to FWS' failure to provide notice and comment on its guidelines for creating species status assessments. An environmental group had argued that FWS violated the ESA by failing to put the guidelines through notice and comme...

The Ninth Circuit reversed summary judgment for FWS in a challenge to the Service's rule requiring that affected states receive a 30-day notice of intent to file a petition to list an endangered species. An environmental group argued that FWS violated the ESA by impermissibly requiring the 30-day no...

A district court granted an environmental group's motion for preliminary injunction in a challenge to FWS' alleged allowance of commercial horseshoe crab harvesting in the Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge. The group argued the Service violated the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act (Refuge I...

A district court denied a Native American tribe's request to limit water releases from the Upper Klamath Lake to protect two endangered sucker fish species. The tribe argued that the Bureau of Reclamation's plan to regulate water in the Klamath Basin violated the ESA by allowing the lake's water lev...

A district court granted in part and denied in part BLM's and FWS' motion to dismiss a lawsuit over an environmental group's petition to list a rare wildflower species in Nevada as endangered. The group first argued FWS unreasonably delayed responding to its request for emergency listing of Tiehm's ...

A district court vacated and remanded FWS' and the Forest Service's approval of the first phase of a proposed copper and silver mine beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. Tribal and environmental groups argued the agencies violated the ESA by failing to reinitiate consultation on the mine's impa...

A district court granted an environmental group's motion for summary judgment in a challenge to FWS' withdrawal of a rule proposed in 2015 to list the Lower Colorado River (LCR) Basin roundtail chub as a threatened species. The group argued that FWS' withdrawal of the rule rested entirely on the Ser...

A district court denied an environmental group's motion for summary judgment in a challenge to NMFS' approval of an amendment to a fishery management plan (FMP) for an Atlantic herring fishery. The group argued NMFS violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) by failing to designate river herring, which...

A district court granted in part and denied in part environmental groups' motion for summary judgment in a challenge to incidental take regulations promulgated by NMFS that authorized certain oil and gas exploration and production activities in Cook Inlet. The groups argued that NMFS violated the Ma...

The D.C. Circuit granted in part, denied in part, and dismissed in part a petition to review FERC's approval of changes to dam operations in northwest Indiana after determining that the hydroelectric dam partially caused mussel deaths, as well as FWS' biological opinion (BiOp) upon which the Commiss...