Articles

Last month, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld against an environmentalist challenge the decision of the National Park Service to manage the elk herd in the Rocky National Mountain Forest by means of managed culling rather than wolf predation.  In WildEarth Guardians v. National Park Service, the plaintiff environmentalists challenged the S ...

On Monday, the Supreme Court granted cert in United States Forest Service v. Pacific Rivers Council, to review the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision overturning the Forest Service’s assessment of the environmental impacts of proposed amendments to management plans for eleven Sierra Nevada national forests.  This marks the ...

Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the Northern District of California ruled in Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management that the Bureau violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it failed to produce an environmental impact statement detailing the environmental effects attendant on the lease of some 2,700 acres ...

In Pacific Rivers Council v. United States Forest Service, environmental groups challenged the environmental review documents associated with the Forest Service’s 2004 framework to govern timber harvesting in the Sierra Nevada National Forest.  (Basically, the environmentalists disagreed with the government’s decision to reduce forest ...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was intended to protect the human environment, not to keep humans out of the environment.  Yet that is exactly how the United States Forest Service is using NEPA – to keep people away from forests.  The Service is closing forest access to those among us who are unable to hike countless  ...

The U. S. Forest Service summarily closed 90% of the lawful, user-created motorized routes in Tahoe National Forest, thereby constructing a virtual roadblock to keep all but the most able-bodied away from the forest’s aesthetic and recreational opportunities.  By its decision  denying access, the Forest Service showed its true colors ...

Last week, a coalition of California Central Valley water districts sued the Bureau of Reclamation in the latest installment of the litigation wars over the delta smelt.*  The new lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Fresno, and coming on the heels of the Governor Brown administration’s announcement to release an additional annual 20 ...

Today, we filed our notice of appeal in Granat v. USDA, a challenge to the Forest Service’s massive route-closure initiative on the Plumas National Forest in northeastern California. In 2005, the Forest Service promulgated a Travel Management Rule. The Rule’s purpose was to formalize and combine the existing network of legally authoriz ...

Washington limits the reach of the public trust doctrine. Congress gets an earful on the problems with the federal permitting process Amicus Brief Filed in Challenge to San Francisco’s Discriminatory Sign Ban Santa Barbara inspection case headed to a hearing Washington limits the reach of the public trust doctrine. Yesterday, the Washington S ...