The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Reclamation did not violate the ESA when it renewed 41 water service contracts in California despite concerns over the endangered delta smelt. Conservation groups argued that the Bureau renewed the contracts without conducting an adequate consultation under ...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a petition to vacate the state wildlife board's decision to pay $9.98 million from the California Habitat Conservation Fund to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for the Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project. The pe...

The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service violated the ESA when it failed to consult with federal wildlife agencies before approving four notices of intent (NOIs) to conduct mining activities in coho salmon critical habitat within the Klamath National Forest. The ...

A district court held that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) did not violate NEPA or the ESA when it accepted over 300 bids for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. An environmental group argued that the ag...

The Eleventh Circuit upheld FWS' decision denying environmental groups' petitions to designate critical habitat for the Florida panther under the ESA. The Secretary of the Interior listed the Florida panther as an endangered species in 1967—more than a decade before the 1978 amendments required a ...

The Eleventh Circuit upheld FWS' denial of petitions to designate critical habitat for the Florida panther under the ESA. Environmental groups claimed that the denial of their petitions was arbitrary and capricious under the APA. But neither the ESA nor the regulations cited by the groups provid...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a consent decree vacating a portion of a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) regulation increasing the limit on incidental interactions between longline fishing boats and loggerhead turtles and reducing the incidental take limits back to preexisting 2004 levels. The con...

The D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's action challenging FWS' and the National Park Service's plan for managing elk and bison populations in the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park. Part of this plan includes ending the longstanding agen...

A district court, in a 116-page opinion, upheld the FWS' final rule listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the ESA. The FWS' decision to list the bear represents a reasoned exercise of the agency's discretion based on the facts and the best available science as of 2008 when the ag...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying an environmental group's request to enjoin the implementation of a statute, §1713 of the 2011 Appropriations Act, that orders the Secretary of the Interior to remove a portion of a distinct population of gray wolves from the protections ...