A district court ordered NMFS to take a "hard look" at the environmental impacts of its definition of "fishery" with regard to the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish fishery management plan (FMP) and whether river herring and shad should be included in the FMP. In 2014, the Mid-Atlantic Fisher...
A district court ordered the state of Idaho to propose a plan to protect the Canada lynx, a threatened species, from being inadvertently captured or killed in northern Idaho due to traps set by trappers intending to lure other species. The state does not restrict how many traps or snares a licensed ...
A district court dismissed recreational fishing groups' lawsuit against NMFS concerning its management of the red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups challenged the enactment of Amendment 40 to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Reef Fish Fishery Management Plan and an a...
The D.C. Circuit dismissed recreational fishing groups' lawsuit against NMFS for failing to manage stocks of river herring and shad in the Atlantic Ocean from New York to North Carolina. In 2012, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council began developing Amendment 15 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Bu...
A district court held that USDA's Wildlife Services failed to comply with NEPA with respect to gray wolf management in Washington. The agency entered into a cooperative service agreement with Washington's wildlife agency to help implement the state's Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, particular...
The D.C. Circuit dismissed a conservation group's lawsuit against FWS for failing to make a timely determination on their petition to list certain species of sturgeon as endangered or threatened under the ESA. Upon the filing of a listing petition, FWS must make an initial determination within 90 da...
A district court refused to preliminarily enjoin federal land use restrictions intended to protect the greater sage grouse. Mining companies, the state of Nevada, and other plaintiffs filed suit challenging BLM's and the U.S. Forest Service's decisions to amend their resource management plans to pro...
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...