The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for BLM in a challenge to the agency's "geld and release" plan for wild horses in northeastern Nevada. An animal rights group argued that BLM violated NEPA by failing to prepare an EIS for the plan because five of the Act's intensity factors demonstrated t...

The D.C. Circuit invalidated FERC's longstanding practice of issuing tolling orders to extend the statutory period for acting on requests for rehearing of its orders, in a lawsuit concerning the Commission's granting of a certificate of public convenience and necessity to a natural gas pipeline in P...

A district court vacated a timber harvesting project in Tongass National Forest after previously ruling that the Forest Service violated NEPA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the National Forest Management Act when it authorized the project. Both the plaintiff environmental ...

The Tenth Circuit upheld the Forest Service's approval of two forest-thinning projects in the Santa Fe National Forest. Environmental groups and individuals argued the Service violated NEPA by failing to adequately consider the projects' effects on inventoried roadless areas and their cumulative imp...

The D.C. Circuit vacated a district court ruling concerning DOI's cancellation of an oil and gas lease in Montana. The leaseholder challenged the Department's cancellation, and the district court ruled in its favor, holding that the amount of time that had elapsed between the issuance of the lease a...

The U.S. Supreme Court held, 7-2, that the Forest Service had authority under the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) to issue a special use permit that granted a right-of-way for a segment of a natural gas pipeline to be constructed beneath the Appalachian Trail in George Washington National Forest. Environm...