A district court vacated FWS' final rule designating approximately 187,157 square miles in Alaska and adjacent territorial and U.S. waters as critical habitat for the polar bear, ruling that the designation "went too far and was too extensive." Although the final rule is valid in many respects, the ...

The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's CWA, CERCLA, and EPCRA claims against BP and Transocean Ltd. following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP leased the mobile offshore drilling unit known as Deepwater Horizon from Transo...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's adoption of the Idaho Roadless Rule, which creates different categories of land within Idaho's 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. The court affirmed and adopted as its own a lower court ruling that also approved the rule. FWS's biologi...