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  • Audio file (If file doesn’t begin playing immediately, right-click to download it and then listen) USGS links Assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Bakken and Three Forks Formations, Williston Basin Province, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2013 Input-form data for the U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Devonian and Mississippian Bakken and Devonian Three [...]

  • Other links Pesticide report leaves tough questions unanswered (Defenders of Wildlife) Feds Are Failing to Protect Endangered Species From Pesticides (Center for Biological Diversity) Press release from National Research Council (4/30/2013) Federal Agencies Should Use a Common Approach to Evaluate Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered and Threatened Species WASHINGTON — When determining the potential effects [...]

  • “W.Va. members of Congress promise action against EPA” is the headline in the West Virginia Record, whose article noted that 80 percent of the state’s congressional delegation had posted press releases criticizing the D.C. Circuit’s decision that said EPA had the authority to partially revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine. (Only Jay Rockefeller appears [...]

  • The National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council will release a report next week evaluating the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. Here’s the statement from NAS: Evaluating Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered, Threatened Species – New Report A new report from the National Research Council examines how the U.S. Environmental Protection [...]

  • U.S. District Court Judge Joseph C. Spero dismissed an ESA citizen suit seeking to force consultation under the ESA “regarding the effects of 382 registered pesticides on endangered and threatened species” (Center for Biological Diversity v. EPA, 11-293-JCS, N.D. Cal.). “Plaintiffs have not pled sufficient facts to show that the EPA was required to reinitiate [...]

  • The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision that had scolded EPA for revoking a Clean Water Act permit that already had been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. U.S. EPA, 12-5150, 4/23/13). Wrong, the appeals court said. “[W]e reverse the district court insofar as it [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 19, 2013): Asian elephant shot, loggerhead sea turtle egg snatcher sentenced, DOI budget proposed

    Catching up on the Fish and Wildlife Service: The service’s main page features the following news releases: FWS is investigating the shooting of an Asian elephant traveling with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Tupelo, Miss. “The incident occurred in the early morning of April 9, 2013, outside the Bancorp South Arena,” the [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 17, 2013)

    The American Bird Conservancy is touting a study that concludes feral cats are killing endangered Hawaiian petrels. The proof is in the pictures, ABC said. For the first time, videos were taken showing cats preying on petrels. In one, a feral cat “wait[ed] near the entrance of a burrow for over one hour.  When the [...]

  • Link to the full document The Obama Administration today released its National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, which the service said “provides a roadmap of key steps needed over the next five years to reduce the current and expected impacts of climate change on our natural resources, which include: changing species distributions and [...]

  • Audubon writer Ted Williams suspended, pulled from masthead, for Orlando Sentinel column on feral cats

    Update, 3/25/13: The media are starting to take note of Williams’ suspension. See the article and the list of links below for more coverage of this story. Veteran conservation journalist Ted Williams, who for years has penned the Incite column for Audubon magazine, has been suspended and had his name removed from the publication’s masthead, [...]

11th Circuit upholds Florida water quality settlement

 Posted by on August 4, 2011  Daily Links
Aug 042011
 

The 11th Circuit gave environmentalists a narrow victory Wednesday, ruling 2-1 that water utilities in Florida could not challenge a settlement between EPA and environmental groups that sets a timeline for adoption of numeric nutrient standards for Florida waters (Florida Wildlife Fed’n v. South Fla. Water Mngt. District, 10-10886, 11th Cir.)

No case or controversy remains, the appeals court said.  Chief Judge Joel F. Dubina and Senior Judge R. Lanier Edmondson comprised the majority; Circuit Judge Charles R. Wilson dissented.

Earthjustice, which represents the environmental groups in the litigation, said the court had “struck down a challenge filed by polluting industries and upheld a historic clean water settlement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Earthjustice. The 2009 settlement requires EPA to set limits on sewage, fertilizer and manure in Florida’s waterways.”

At issue was a consent decree approved by a district court on Dec. 30, 2009, which required issuance of water quality standards for Florida’s lakes and streams by December 2010.

“The only way that this court could issue a decision that ‘directly redresses the injury suffered’ from the December 2010 rule is if we were able to strike down the rule itself,” the majority said. “In other words, the rule would have to depend on the validity of the consent decree. Because this is not the case, the appellants’ alleged injuries stemming from the December 2010 rule are not redressable and do not present a justiciable claim under the mootness doctrine.”

Here’s a little more from the court on standing:

When third-party intervenors appeal a consent decree that both the nominal plaintiffs and defendants support, the court’s standing analysis becomes more complicated. While the case is pending in the district court, there is a live case or controversy between the plaintiff and defendant, so the intervenors are free to challenge the proposed consent decree without having to prove standing independently. Once the district court approves the consent decree, however, the original case or controversy evaporates, and an intervenor appealing the decree must assert an independent case or controversy in order to maintain standing.

Wilson didn’t like the majority’s reasoning:

Under the majority’s view of traceability and redressibility [sic], no one could ever have standing to challenge a consent decree that is entered prior to a final agency rulemaking on the same matter.

Here’s the court’s initial summary of its decision:

Intervenors-appellants Florida Water Environment Association Utility Council and South Florida Water Management District appeal the district court’s order approving a consent decree between [EPA] and a group of environmentalist organizations. The consent decree settled a suit filed by the plaintiffs against the EPA that alleged that the agency failed to promulgate timely new water-quality standards for the state of Florida. The appellants claim that the consent decree is substantively and procedurally unreasonable and that the district court abused its discretion by approving the decree. Because the appellants have not demonstrated a live case or controversy that would give this court jurisdiction over their case, we dismiss their appeal.

Links:

Associated Press in Miami Herald

Here’s a portion of that story:

One interested observer was Chris Johnson, chief of water quality technical support for Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management. He said if EPA can set standards for Florida it could do it for other states.

“It’s certainly kind of precedent-setting,” Johnson said. “All states have their eyes on Florida.”

Congressional delisting of wolf upheld by federal judge

 Posted by on August 4, 2011  Daily Links
Aug 042011
 

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy did not mince words in a ruling issued yesterday that upheld congressional authority to delist the gray wolf in the Northern Rocky Mountains.

Gray wolves (Photo courtesy FWS)

“If I were not constrained by what I believe is binding precedent from the Ninth Circuit, and on-point precedent from other circuits,  I would hold Section 1713 is unconstitutional because it violates the Separation of Powers doctrine,” Molloy said in his order. The rider had invalidated his own decision that found the Fish and Wildlife Service’s partial delisting of the Northern Rocky Mountain DPS to be unlawful.

He called the rider “a tearing away, an undermining, and a disrespect for the fundamental idea of the rule of law.”

Those quotes come from a Center for Biological Diversity press release issued late yesterday after Molloy issued his verdict.

Here’s another: The rider “sacrifices the spirit of the ESA to appease a vocal political faction, but the wisdom of that choice is not now before this Court.”

More excerpts on the way…

Links

Order from CBD page

Molloy issued a 35-page order the same day after his ruling on the constitutional issue. In it, he (1) found that Defenders of Wildlife, et al.’s ESA claims over the delisting were unripe, and (2) ruled against the plaintiffs on their NEPA claims (Defenders of Wildlife v. Hall, 08-14-M-DWM, D. Mont.)

Because of the congressional action allowing the delisting of wolves in Idaho and Montana, Molloy said “[t]he only remaining wolves who might potentially be affected by the challenged 2008 10(j) rule are in three or four packs located on Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation.  Accordingly, the analysis of the Federal Defendants’ jurisdictional challenges must be confined to the effects of 2008 10(j) rule as applies to management of the wolf populations on the Wind River Indian Reservation.”

Missoulian coverage (by Rob Chaney). CBD Executive Director Kieran Suckling tells Chaney, “If you have to lose a court case, this is about the best possible way to do it. He lays out the pathway for environmentalists to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit and have it overturned.”

AP story, which modifies CBD’s headline slightly: “Judge reluctantly upholds law stripping Northern Rockies wolves of endangered species status,” instead of “Court reluctantly denies challenge to congressional rider that stripped wolves of protection ”

New West’s take links to a story in the  Lewiston Tribune that quotes Suckling saying, ““I’ve never seen anything like it [Molloy's ruling]. He is not only intimating the wolf rider is unconstitutional and the 9th Circuit is wrong but he is laying out a road map on how to appeal his own ruling and take it all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Legal Planet analysis of the ruling and what might happen down the road (by Holly Doremus, UC-Berkeley)

Section 1713 is in this spending bill: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1473enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1473enr.pdf   Here is the language:, which essentially turns back the clock to a time when Molloy’s invalidation of the partial delisting had not taken place:

Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without regard to any other provision of statute or regulation that applies to issuance of such rule. Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review and shall not abrogate or otherwise have any effect on the order and judgment issued by the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming in Case Numbers 09–CV–118J and 09–CV–138J on November 18, 2010.

  Howling for Justice blog

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