The Ninth Circuit held that portions of Idaho’s Agricultural Security Act violate the First Amendment. The law, enacted after a secretly-filmed expose of operations at an Idaho dairy farm went live on the internet, broadly criminalizes making misrepresentations to access an agricultural production...

A district court held that USDA Wildlife Services did not violate NEPA with its lethal wolf management policy in Idaho. In 2011, the gray wolf was delisted under the ESA in Idaho; as a result, management of the wolf population was returned to the state. Wildlife Services conducted an EA in 2011 conc...

A district court held that the state of Texas cannot challenge the listing of the golden-cheeked warbler as endangered under the ESA. The state brought a lawsuit against FWS alleging that the agency unlawfully dismissed a petition to delist the golden-cheeked warbler. The petition provided evidence ...

A district court held that a Forest Service fire salvage restoration project could proceed despite its risk to protected species. The Cedar Fire began on August 16, 2016, and burned for three weeks over 29,000 acres of mixed conifer and white fir forest, most of which were in the Sequoia National Fo...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of an injunction to halt a logging project in Oregon. A conservation group brought a citizen suit under the ESA challenging a logging project it claimed would result in the taking of the marbled murrelet, a seabird listed as a threatened species. The ...

The D.C. Circuit held that the Park Service did not violate NEPA when it authorized recreational hunts of elk in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. The Grand Teton and the National Elk Refuge (Refuge) are home to the “Jackson herd,” one of the largest concentrations of elk in North America. ...

The D.C. Circuit held that the USDA's decision to alter territorial lines of the Devil's Garden Wild Horse Territory section of the Modoc National Forest was in violation of NEPA. Since 1975, the United States Forest Service has protected and managed wild horses in the Devil’s Garden section in No...

The D.C. Circuit held that the USDA did not violate the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) when it renewed the licenses of animal exhibitors the agency knew was in violation of numerous animal welfare requirements. Animal activists brought suit against the agency, challenging its renewal of a license to an Io...

A district court held that the approval of a mining project in Montana violated the ESA. A mining company submitted a plan to the Forest Service and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to extract copper and silver from an ore vein that ran beneath federal land. On March 31, 2014, FW...

The Ninth Circuit held that NMFS and DOI did not violate NEPA or the ESA when they approved the use of hatcheries to restore Elwha River fish populations in the state of Washington, after a dam removal project. Environmental groups challenged the decision to approve the hatchery as arbitrary and cap...