The D.C. Circuit affirmed the U.S. Forest Service's decision denying an emergency petition filed by an environmental group seeking “roadless” designation for roughly 1,000 acres on Burnt Mountain in Colorado's Snowmass ski area and suspension of the Aspen Skiing Company’s authorization to cut ...

The Tenth Circuit upheld a lower court decision rejecting the claims of San Juan County and the state of Utah to a public right-of-way, called Salt Creek Road, in Canyonlands National Park. The state and county wish to use their claimed right-of-way to prevent the United States from closing the Salt...

A district court upheld the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's latest land use and development plan for the Lake Tahoe Area Basin, located along the California and Nevada border. The updated plan, issued in 2012, includes the agency's adoption of a regional transportation plan and the incorporation of...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision invalidating a 2003 USDA regulation that temporarily exempted Alaska's Tongass National Forest from the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. USDA clearly acknowledged that its 2003 record of decision, which excluded the Tongass from the Roadless Rul...

A district court held that fee restrictions set forth in the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (REA) do not apply to private, third-party concessionaires who operate recreation areas within the National Forests. Nonprofit groups challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s issuance of several speci...

A district court held that environmental groups' NEPA and FLPMA claims against BLM in connection with its decision to lease two coal tracts in Wyoming's Powder River Basin lack merit. The groups alleged that BLM violated the statutes because the agency failed to adequately consider the impacts on lo...

The Ninth Circuit held that BLM did not violate NEPA or FLPMA when it approved the expansion of a gold mine near Nevada's Mount Tenabo. Native American tribes claimed that BLM failed to address mitigation measures specific to groundwater in situ, failed to propose new mitigation measures relating to...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a railroad right-of-way that crossed land the United States conveyed to a family in a 1976 land patent was an easement that was extinguished when the railroad formally abandoned it in 2004, thereby leaving the family's land unburdened. The U.S. government initiated t...

Massachusetts' highest court upheld the state's "priority habitat" regulations insofar as they allow the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to designate priority habitat without affording landowners the procedural protections statutorily due to those owning property within "significant...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of activists' lawsuit challenging the construction of a 20-mile, high-speed rail project in Honolulu, Hawaii. The activists claimed that DOT, the Federal Transit Administration, and the city violated NEPA and §4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act (DOT ...