FOREST SERVICE
Preliminary injunction denied in Yellowstone to Uintas Connection v. Bolling (D. Idaho)
On July 14, the district court denied a request to enjoin the Crow Creek Pipeline Project crossing 18.2 miles of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. The pipeline would replace trucks conveying natural gas from Montpelier, Idaho, to Afton, Wyoming. To accommodate the right-of-way, the Forest Service created a utility corridor under the Caribou National Forest Revised Forest Plan. The Forest Service had supplemented its EIS for the pipeline after a prior lawsuit. Noting the lack of an administrative record at this time, the court held that the Forest Service would not violate a forest plan standard for sage-grouse because it was not clear that sage-grouse habitat would be involved. Nor would it violate the Mineral Leasing Act’s or the forest plan’s requirements for utility corridors. The court also stated, “it appears the harms alleged are overblown or otherwise speculative.” Here, a plaintiff talks more about the alleged harms.
New lawsuit: Friends of Bell Smith Springs v. U. S. Forest Service (S.D. Illinois)
On July 15, Friends of Bell Smith Springs and the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists filed a complaint to oppose the McCormick Oak-Hickory Restoration Project on the Shawnee National Forest. The 70-acre Project would allegedly include “commercial logging of numerous large and mature hardwoods, many of which are located on steep slopes above Hunting Branch or its tributaries,” which flow into the nearby Bell Smith Springs National Natural Landmark. They claim that the categorial exclusion and decision memo were improperly used where there are known extraordinary circumstances that require at least an EA to consider sediment effects on the Natural Landmark, and effects on proposed and listed bat species. The article includes a link to the complaint.
Settlement in San Juan Citizens Alliance v. Padilla (D. Colorado)
On July 17, the Forest Service agreed to make changes in the Salter Vegetation Management Project on 23,000 acres of the San Juan National Forest and settle this lawsuit filed two years ago. According to plaintiffs in this news release, the Forest Service has agreed to protect “the largest 10% of trees in each treatment block, with narrow exceptions for those overwhelmed by pine beetles and mistletoe.” The Forest Service has also agreed to site visits with local stakeholders before and after logging in each block.
Preliminary injunction denied in Alliance for the Wild Rockies v. Mulholland (D. Montana)
On July 22, the district court found that Plaintiffs had not raised serious questions going to the merits of their case, and denied their motion for a preliminary injunction against the Round Star Vegetation Management Project on the Flathead National Forest. The Project involves a range of vegetation management components across 9,151 acres of national forest, including commercial treatments of 6,324 acres, of which 580 acres would be clearcut. The Project is in both grizzly bear habitat and the wildland-urban interface. The court determined that the ESA consultation process adequately addressed cumulative effects of roads on nonfederal lands, and used the best available science about the effects of roads on grizzly bears.
BLM
Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. C. Circuit)
On July 15, the circuit court agreed with the district court and ruled against a coalition of conservation groups that sought to challenge more than 4,000 individual drilling permits across Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and New Mexico’s Permian Basin. The court dismissed the case for lack of standing to sue by members of the organizations. “Plaintiffs cannot rely on allegations of the kinds of concrete harms generally associated with oil and gas extraction to challenge permits for oil and gas extraction across thousands of square miles of New Mexico and Wyoming without linking their experience of those harms to the challenged permits,” the court wrote. With regard to the effects on plaintiffs of climate change, the court stated the groups lacked “standing on their substantive climate change theory because ‘climate change is a harm that is shared by humanity at large,’ and a desire to ‘prevent an increase in global temperature’ is ‘too generalized to establish standing’ even when plaintiffs have a particularized interest in vulnerable species and ecosystems.” Plaintiffs’ take-home was, “A smaller subset of wells, with a slightly more precise, description of the geographic nexus of harms, would still be possible to bring in court.” Here is the opinion.
Preliminary injunction denied in Center for Biological Diversity v. Carey (D. Montana)
On July 15, the district court refused to enjoin the Big River thinning project, a portion of the decade-long Clark Fork Face Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project that was about to begin. The Big River thinning project authorizes the thinning trees that are taller than 4.5 feet in height and less than eight inches in diameter, and according to a declaration by a BLM employee, would not require any road construction. Without road construction, the court found irreparable harm to grizzly bears to be unlikely, and it considered the trees being thinned as not being important to Canada lynx habitat. The article includes a link to the complaint.
Court decision in American Wild Horse Campaign v. Raby (10th Circuit)
On July 15, the circuit court invalidated a resource management plan amendment by the BLM that would establish wild horse population goals of zero for two herd management areas and reduce goals for another on more than two million acres of checkerboard ownership in southwestern Wyoming in response to local ranchers. (It would violate the Unlawful Inclosures Act for the ranchers to fence the private land in checkerboard ownership.) The RMP amendment would lead to removal of all of the roughly 3000 wild horses in an area of over two million acres. The court held that the BLM acted arbitrarily and capriciously in adopting its plan because it failed to address a requirement of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act: managing wild horses and burros as part of a “thriving natural ecological balance on public lands.” The court found that the BLM complied with NEPA and FLPMA. The article includes a link to the opinion, which remands the case to the district court to determine if the amendment must be vacated. The long history of the litigation is provided here.
ENDANGERED SPECIES
New lawsuit: Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. Oregon)
On July 17, the Bird Alliance of Oregon, Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands joined the Center for Biological Diversity in this suit opposing the decision by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to not list the red tree vole’s north Oregon coast distinct population segment as either threatened or endangered. Logging is one of the main threats, and though plaintiffs credit the Northwest Forest Plan with helping protect the the species, the Siuslaw National Forest is mentioned in the complaint (which is linked to their news release).
OTHER
Motion to dismiss denied in U.S.A. v. Scott (D. Idaho)
On July 11, the district court denied a motion to dismiss two counts of an indictment against a licensed Idaho outfitter who conducted guided bighorn sheep hunts on the Salmon-Challis National Forest without a permit. The case was prosecuted as a violation of the Lacey Act, which prohibits transporting, selling, or acquiring wildlife taken in violation of federal, state, or tribal law, and that includes a wildlife kill during a commercially guided hunt without a proper federal permit. The defendant held permits, but they did not include the area where two kills occurred. The defendant argued that the Forest Service was incorrectly interpreting its forest plan to prohibit issuing permits for guided hunting in the area involved. The court held:
“Thus, even if Scott were to prevail on his allegations that the Forest Plan was somehow flawed and/or that the Forest Plan shouldn’t “strictly” prohibit hunting in MA-19, it would not change the fact that commercial hunting requires a permit, and Scott’s lack of a permit, among other things, was a violation of the Lacey Act.”
The court also found that Scott had not made any effort to challenge the Forest Service’s interpretation of its plan and had therefore not exhausted his administrative remedies.
Court decision in Colorado Advocates for Public Safety v. Stolzmann (Colorado appeals court)
On July 17, Colorado’s second highest court ruled that two landowners adjacent to national forest land could not sue the county’s commissioners for walking back a policy originally banning firearm discharge on that federal land (which they did because of concerns about their authority to regulate hunting on federal land). The court found that the parties could not sue because “an act that permits a third party to engage in conduct that impacts a plaintiff is too indirect and incidental to constitute an injury in fact.” The article has a link to the opinion.
Case dismissed in Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Cox (Salt Lake County District Court)
On July 22, the state court dismissed this challenge under the Utah State Constitution to the State’s petition to the U. S. Supreme Court seeking to acquire BLM lands. After the U. S. Supreme Court denied Utah’s petition, the state court determined that this case is now moot. Plaintiffs had amended their complaint to try to prevent the State from taking a similar action in a lower court. The article includes a link to the order.
New lawsuit: Idaho Conservation League v. Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (Idaho district court for Ada County)
On July 23, the Idaho Conservation League and Save the South Fork Salmon filed a lawsuit in Idaho’s Fourth District Court over a state air quality permit to resume activities at the Stibnite Gold Mine on the Payette National Forest. The complaint (the article includes a link) alleges the permit fails to include adequate monitoring and other safeguards to ensure arsenic and other pollutants are kept at safe levels, and improperly exempts the access road from having to comply with air pollution protections. A lawsuit is also pending against the Forest Service.
Thanks, Jon, great roundup as usual! I was curious about the 70 acres.. https://www.fs.usda.gov/r09/shawnee/projects/archive/66483 Here’s the Proposed Action.. I guess it’s either “adios, oaks and hickories” or maybe non-commercial tree removal? Hard to tell what the plaintiffs are looking for.
“The proposed action consists of an intermediate thinning of hardwoods to promote ecosystem health and resilience by maintaining the oak-hickory stands in the project area. The stands (continuous areas with similar tree characteristics) under consideration for this project are beginning to show signs of decline due to overstocking. An overstocked stand is a forested area that has more trees than the resources can accommodate, and this causes the trees to be less resilient to drought, disease, and insect infestation. As these stands age, trees in the shorter-lived red oak group will be among the first to experience increased mortality, followed by other oaks and hickories which are shade intolerant. While there is some oak and hickory regeneration present in these stands the majority are failing to reach the sapling stage because they are being shaded-out. Hard mast (acorns and nuts) producing species such as oak and hickory require disturbance to allow more sunlight to reach the forest floor and promote regeneration. The goal of this proposed action is to create varying gaps in the canopy and provide increased growing space, freeing up water and nutrient resources for the remaining mature and new regenerating oak-hickory stands. This action will increase overall stand resiliency and allow the oak-hickory habitat that is essential for wildlife to thrive.”
According to the complaint, plaintiffs don’t agree with this rationale: “Numerous public comments, from Plaintiffs as well as concerned citizens, challenged this rationale along with the faulty, outdated science it is based on” (elaborated on in Par. 14). (Did you notice if game species that like acorns are part of the rationale, too?)
What they want is no logging in their special place to recreate; here’s the background from their website: “Friends of Bell Smith Springs was formed over 25 years ago when the U. S. Forest Service announced their plans to clear cut and log over 4,000 acres in and around the Bell Smith Springs canyon. Since then this organization has led the movement to protect this rare jewel of the Shawnee National Forest. Despite the best efforts of the Forest Service and the timber industry they serve, those trees at Bell Smith Springs are still standing.”
Here’s the DOJ “blog post” on the Caribou-Targhee pipeline case. (That’s two of these, I’ve seen recently; maybe they’ll be putting me out of business. But I wonder if they’ll say anything when they lose.)
\https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/justice-department-secures-win-american-energy-crow-creek-natural-gas-pipeline