Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

To resolve environmental groups’ lawsuit challenging a 2019 resource management plan that made 725,500 acres in BLM’s Central Coast Field Office planning area available for oil and gas leasing, the federal defendants agreed to prepare a supplemental EIS that would consider six alternatives analyzed in the 2019 EIS. The defendants also agreed that BLM would solicit and consider additional alternatives, coordinate with local governments and cooperate with them to the maximum extent consistent with federal law, and defer any oil or gas lease sales pending the issuance of a new decision document. Allegations in the complaint included that BLM failed to adequately analyze the plan’s impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and climate.