The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing the Navajo Nation's lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) that seeks immediate return of human remains and associated funerary objects taken from its reservation. Between 1931 and 1990, NPS removed 303 sets of human remains and a...

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision barring a hunter from using a hovercraft over a stretch of the Nation River that flows through the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, a conservation system unit in Alaska that is managed by NPS. The hunter argued that NPS' ban on hovercraft...

The D.C. Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to exclude approximately 8,300 acres of federal land that fall within recreational ski boundaries from the Colorado roadless rule. The Service issued the rule in 2012, adopting state-specific standards for the designation and management of t...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to close to domestic sheep grazing approximately 70% of allotments on which grazing had been permitted in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The Forest Service's decision was made in response to concerns about disease transmission to imm...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow motorized vehicles on just 62 of 869 miles of user-created roads and trails in the Tahoe National Forest. To implement the 2005 Travel Management Rule in the Tahoe National Forest, the Forest Service pre...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a proposed management plan for the Presidio, a former military base in San Franciso that is now a National Park and a National Historic Landmark, that provides for the construction of a 70,000 square foot lodge. The Presidio is managed by the Presidio Trust, a wholly owned g...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, held that environmental groups have standing to bring a RCRA citizen suit against the U.S. Forest Service for failing to regulate the disposal of spent lead ammunition in the Kaibab National Forest. The groups allege that the Forest Service's failure to ...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying environmental groups' motion to preliminarily enjoin a forest fire recovery project in the southern Oregon Klamath Mountains. After a fire destroyed approximately 48,000 acres of forest in Oregon, BLM initiated the project to salvage remainin...

A district court denied a motion to preliminarily enjoin BLM and the U.S. Forest Service from implementing certain amendments to their resource management plans that were made to better protect the greater sage-grouse and its habitat. The amended resource management plans govern 67 million acres of ...

A district court dismissed several claims a group of cattle ranchers filed against USDA and DOI concerning actions taken to protect the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, an endangered species. Following the listing of the species in 2014, the U.S. Forest Service proposed to erect a five-foot pipe fen...