The Ninth Circuit upheld the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's (BSEE's) approval of oil spill response plans for an oil company's leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas on Alaska's Arctic coast. Several environmental groups claimed that BSEE's approval was arbitrary and capricious un...

The D.C. Circuit held that building and development associations lacked standing to challenge consent decrees that require FWS to determine, in accordance with a settlement-defined schedule, whether 251 species should be listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA. The case arose after environm...

A district court adopted a magistrate judge's report and recommendation and ordered FWS to finalize and approve a comprehensive conservation plan for five national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin Complex on or before August 1, 2016. FWS conceded, and the court had already ordered, that FWS vio...

A district court held that FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the ESA and NEPA when they issued 50-year incidental take permits to a farm to take the northern spotted owl and the Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast coho salmon, both of which are "threatened" species....

A district court held that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the ESA, and NEPA when it authorized the U.S. Navy to take large numbers of marine mammals, some of which are endangered or threatened, incidental to training and testing activit...

A district court held that BLM violated NEPA and the APA when it authorized a logging project in an area of Douglas County, Oregon, that provides habitat for the northern spotted owl. In its EA for the project, which would effectively remove 160 acres of mature forest, BLM failed to consider a reaso...

A district court held that environmental groups may go forward with their ESA lawsuit challenging OSM's issuance of SMCRA permits for two surface coal mines. The groups alleged that OSM failed to adequately consider how wastewater discharges from the mines would impact the Cumberland darter and blac...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court decision affirming the U.S. Forest Service's decision to implement the Little Slate Project, a 2,598-acre timber thinning sale within the Nez Perce National Forest. Environmental groups asserted that the Forest Service and FWS violated the National Forest Manag...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS') biological opinion regarding the impact of continuing water extraction in the California Central Valley on certain threatened and endangered salmonid species. In its biological opinion, NMFS determined that the Bureau of Reclam...

A district court, in a 100+-page opinion, vacated an FWS rule removing the western Great Lakes distinct population segment (DPS) of gray wolves from the ESA’s list of protected species and ordered the agency to reinstate immediately the protections for gray wolves in the affected area as these pro...