A district court granted in part summary judgment for environmental groups in a challenge to FWS' and the Forest Service's decisions regarding a logging and prescribed burning project in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. The groups argued the Services violated the ESA by failing to reiniti...
A district court dismissed the state of Alaska's lawsuit against the Federal Subsistence Board (FSB) regarding the Board's authorization of a subsistence hunt for a southeast Alaska tribe. Alaska argued the FSB violated the APA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Sunshine A...
The First Circuit granted NOAA's motion to stay a district court order preliminarily enjoining the agency's partial seasonal closure of a Maine lobster fishery to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. A fishing union had argued the closure was an arbitrary and capricious application of the...
A district court granted summary judgment for an environmental group in a challenge to FWS' decision not to list the Joshua tree as threatened under the ESA. The group challenged the Service's findings that Joshua trees were not threatened under either the five threat factors or throughout a signifi...
A district court granted the state of Louisiana's motion for preliminary injunction to delay the effective date of NMFS' 2019 rule requiring turtle excluder devices on certain skimmer trawl vessels operating in inshore waters. The state argued the effective date was arbitrary and capricious because ...
A district court granted interim injunctive relief for environmental groups in a lawsuit concerning the Army Corps of Engineers' operation of dams in the Willamette River Basin. The groups sought injunctive relief to remedy the Corps' substantive and procedural ESA violations previously found by the...
A district court denied a motion for preliminary injunction in a challenge to the National Park Service's (NPS') management practices for the tule elk population in an area of Point Reyes National Seashore. Plaintiffs argued the elk were dying from lack of adequate forage and water due to recent dro...
A district court denied a nonprofit group's motion to preliminarily enjoin BLM from gathering wild horses inside and adjacent to the Onaqui Mountain Herd Management Area. The group argued BLM's 2018 decision to gather the horses over a period of 10 years violated the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Bur...
A district court granted in part and denied in part environmental groups' motion for summary judgment in a challenge to the Forest Service's and FWS' decisions concerning a revised forest plan for the Flathead National Forest. The groups argued the Services' decisions violated the ESA and NEPA. The ...
A district court granted summary judgment for FWS in a challenge to the adequacy of its recovery plan for the threatened bull trout. Environmental groups argued the plan failed to include objective and measurable criteria as required under §4(f) of the ESA. The court found that the ESA did not impo...